The international bestseller critically acclaimed as "undoubtedly the most important book ever written on Soviet es
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Table of contents :
Tsarist Origins (1565 -- 1917) --
The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart conspiracy" (1917 -- 21) --
Foreign intelligence and "active measures" in the Dzerzhinsky era (1919 -- 27) --
Stalin and spy mania (1926 -- 38) --
"Enemies of the people" abroad (1929 -- 40) --
Sigint, agent penetration, and the magnificent five from Cambridge (1930 -- 39) --
The Second World War (1939 -- 41) --
The Great Patriotic War (1941 -- 45) --
The takeover of eastern Europe (1944 -- 48) --
The Cold War: The Stalinist Phase (1945 -- 53) --
The Cold War after Stalin (1953 -- 63) --
The Brezhnev Era: The East, the Third World, and the West (1964 -- 72/73) --
The decline and fall of Detente (1972 -- 84) --
The Gorbachev era 1985.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER CHRIS1DPIIER
ANDREW
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"Fascinating. ..[an] exhaustive and lively history... too authoritative to
be ignored." Christopher Lehmann-Haupt,
New
York Times
By Christopher Andrew Theophile Delcasse and the Making of the Entente Cordiale
The
World War: Causes and Consequences
First
France Overseas: The Great War and the Climax of French Imperial Expansion
WITH
A.S.
KANYA-FORSTNER
The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence
Communities
in the
Twentieth Century
WITH DAVID DILKS Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community
Her Majesty's
Codebreaking and Signals Intelligence Intelligence
and International Relations 1900-1945
WITH JEREMY NOAKES
CHRISTOPHER ANDREW
AND OLEG GORDIEVSKY
THE INSIDE STORY Of
Its
Foreign Operations
from Lenin to Gorbachev
Harper Perennial A Division o/HarperCoWinsPublisbers
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from W. H. Auden's Spain.
Unacknowledged photographs are taken from private collections. The publishers have attempted to trace copyright owners.
Where and
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inadvertent infringement has been
will
be happy to
tions.
A
hardcover edition of
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book was published
1990 by
in
HarperCollins Publishers.
kgb: the inside story. Copyright © 1990 by Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without
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First HarperPerennial edition published 1991
Designed by Cassandra
J.
The Library of Congress has catalogued
Pappas the hardcover
edition as follows:
Andrew, Christopher M.
KGB
:
the inside story / Christopher
Gordievsky. p.
—
Andrew, Oleg
1st ed.
cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 1.
0-06-016605-3
Soviet Union. Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezo-
— History. —
pasnosti
2.
Intelligence service
Union History. I. Gordievsky, Oleg. JN6529.I6A53 1990 327.1'247'009—dc20
—Soviet
II. Title.
90-55525
ISBN 91
92
0-06-092109-9
93
94
95
(pbk.)
CC/HC
10
987654321
To
and
to
Leila, Maria,
and Anna
in
Moscow
Darcy and Ken, Louisa and John in the
in
Washington,
hope that the spread of human rights
in the Soviet
Union
enable them
will,
very soon,
to meet.
Contents
The Evolution of the
KGB
ix
Abbreviations Used in Text Transliteration
xi
of Russian Names
xvii
Maps Europe 1942 Postwar Europe
xviii
xx
Introduction
1
1.
Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)
17
2.
The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and
the "Lockhart
Conspiracy" (1917-21) 3.
38
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" in the
Dzerzhinsky Era (1919-27)
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
4.
Stalin
5.
"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)
6.
Sigint,
65 107
150
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent
Five from Cambridge (1930-39)
vii
173
CONTENTS
viii
7.
The Second World War (1939-41)
8.
The Great
9.
The Takeover of Eastern Europe (1944-48)
341
10.
The Cold War: The
367
11.
The Cold War After
12.
The Brezhnev Era: The East, and the West (1964-72/73)
Patriotic
War
233
270
(1941-45)
Stalinist
Phase (1945-53)
422
Stalin (1953-63)
13.
The Decline and
14.
The Gorbachev Era 1985-
the Third World,
477
Fall of Detente (1972-84)
Appendix A
KGB
Appendix B
Heads of the
606
Chairmen
647
First Chief Directorate
649
(Foreign Intelligence)
Appendix C
The Organization of The Organization of
the
the
KGB KGB
651 First
Chief Directorate (Foreign Intelligence)
KGB
First
532
652
Chief Directorate
(Foreign Intelligence)
654
Headquarters, Yasenevo
Yasenevo
— Main Building
The Organization of Appendix D
KGB
a
KGB
655
Residency
656
Residents in the United States
and Abroad
657
Notes
665
Bibliography
729
Index
745
Illustrations follow
pages 232, 424, and 616
The Evolution of the
December 1917
Cheka
February 1922
Incorporated
July 1923
OGPU
July 1934
Reincorporated
February 1941
NKGB
July 1941
Reincorporated
KGB
NKVD
in
(as
GPU)
4
in
NKVD
(as
GUGB)
in
NKVD
(as
GUGB)
4-
NKGB 4 MGB
April 1943
March 1946
4
October 1947-
Foreign intelligence transferred to
Kl
November 1951 March 1953
Combined with
March 1954
KGB
The term
KGB is
used in
organization throughout
191 7 as well -
when
it
as,
adopted
more its
this
MVD
book
its history,
to
form enlarge i
MVD
to denote the Soviet State Security
since its foundation as the
Cheka
specifically, to refer to State Security since
present name.
IX
in
1954
Abbreviations
Used
in
Text
AEC AFSA AK ANC ASA
Atomic Energy Commission (USA)
AVO
Hungarian security
BfV
BND
FRG FRG
Cheka
All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-
CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
CND
Campaign
Armed Polish
Forces Security Agency (USA): predecessor of
Home Army
(World
War
NSA
II)
African National Congress
Army
Agency (USA): predecessor of
Security
service: predecessor of
AFSA
AVH
security service
foreign intelligence agency
Revolution and Sabotage (Soviet security service, 1917-22)
for
(USA)
Nuclear Disarmament (UK)
Comintern
Communist
COMSUBLANT
Commander
CPUSA CUSS
Communist Party of
DA
American Department (Cuban
International (U.S.) Atlantic submarine forces
the
Cambridge University
of
USA
Socialist Society
DGI) xi
intelligence agency independent
ABBREVIATIONS USED
xii
DGSE DGSP
TEXT
IN
French foreign intelligence service
DIE
Rumanian Rumanian
DISA
Angolan
DLB DS DST
Bulgarian security service
EC
European Community
ECCI
Executive Committee of Communist International
FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
FCD
First Chief (Foreign Intelligence) Directorate of
FN LA FRELIMO
National Front for the Liberation of Angola
FRG
Federal Republic of
Germany
GC&CS
Government Code
&
Dead
security service (Securitate)
foreign intelligence agency
security service
box
letter
French security service
KGB
Front for the Liberation of Mozambique
Cypher School (UK): predecessor of
GCHQ GCHQ GDR
Government Communications Headquarters (UK)
Gehlen Org
FRG semiofficial BND
GKES GKNT GPU
Soviet State
GRU GUGB
Soviet military intelligence agency
German Democratic Republic
Soviet State
Committee Committee
Economic Relations and Technology
for External for Science
State Political Directorate (Soviet security service incorporated in
NKVD,
1922-23)
Main Administration of within
Gulag
foreign intelligence agency: predecessor of
NKVD,
State Security (Soviet security service
1934-43)
Labor camps directorate
Humint
Intelligence derived
HVA
GDR
IADL
International Association of Democratic Lawyers
from human sources
foreign intelligence agency
Branch (India) Department of Soviet Communist Party Central Committer
IB
Intelligence
ID
International
INO
Foreign
Intelligence
GUGB, INU
Foreign
IRA
Irish
Department
1920-41: predecessor of
Intelligence Directorate 1941-54: predecessor of FCD
Republican
Army
of Cheka/GPU/OGPU/ INU of
NKGB/GUGB/MGB,
Abbreviations Used
in
Text
IRD
Information Research Department
IWA
International
JIC
Joint Intelligence
xiii
(UK)
Workers Aid
German
Committee (UK)
SSD
K-5
East
KGB
Committee of State Security
KHAD Kl
Afghan security service Committee of Information (Soviet foreign intelligence agency initially combining foreign directorates of MGB and GRU,
KOR
Polish Workers' Defense
KPD KR Line
German Communist
KRO
Interwar
security service, 1947-49: predecessor of
(Soviet security service, established
1954)
1947-51)
Committee
Party
KGB
Counterintelligence department in
counterespionage
OGPU/GUGB,
residencies
department
predecessor of the
of
Cheka/GPU/
KGB Second Chief Direc-
torate
GCHQ
LPG LSR
London Processing Group,
MGB
Soviet Ministry of State Security, 1946-54
MGIMO
Moscow
MI5
British security service
MOR
Monarchist Association of Central Russia ("The Trust")
transcription service of
Left Socialist Revolutionary
State Institute for International Relations
MPLA
Marxist Popular
MVD
Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs, 1946—
NEP
New Economic
NKGB
People's Commissariat of State Security (Soviet security service,
NKVD
People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (incorporated State
NSA
National Security Agency
NSZRiS
The
Movement
for the Liberation of
Policy
1941 and 1943^6: predecessor of
MGB)
Security 1922-23, 1934-43): predecessor of
People's
Angola
Union
MVD
(USA)
for Defense of
Country and Freedom
(anti-
Bolshevik organization)
NTS
National Labor Alliance (Soviet emigre Social-Democratic organization)
OAU OGPU
Organization for African Unity Unified
State
Political
Directorate (Soviet security service,
1923-34)
Okhrana
Tsarist security service, 1881-1917
ABBREVIATIONS USED
xiv
IN
TEXT
OMS
International Liaison
OSS
Office of Strategic Services (wartime predecessor of the
OUN OZNA
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
PCC PDPA PDRY PLO
Cuban Communist Party (since 1975) Afghan Communist Party
POUM
Workers' Unification Party (Spanish Marxist/Trotskyist Party
PPR PRC PR Line
Polish Workers' [Communist] Party: predecessor of
PROD
NSA
PSP PZPR
Polish United Workers' [Communist] Party
Yugoslav security
Department of Communist International
service: predecessor of
CIA)
UDBA
Yemen
People's Democratic Republic of Palestine Liberation Organization
during 1930s)
RENAMO
PZPR
People's Republic of China Political intelligence
department
in
KGB
residencies
Production Office
Cuban Communist
Party: predecessor of
PCC
ROVS
Mozambique National Resistance Russian Combined Services Union (White Russian emigre
RPC
Russian Political Committee (anti-Bolshevik organization)
SACP SAS SB SDECE
South African Communist Party
group)
Special Air Service
(UK)
Polish security service
Sigint
French foreign intelligence agency: predecessor of DGSE Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") Social Democratic Party of Poland and Lithuania Social Democratic Party (UK) East German Socialist Unity [Communist] Party Intelligence derived from intercepting, analyzing and decrypting
SIM
Spanish Republican security service
SIS
Secret Intelligence Service
SMA
Soviet Military Administration (East
Smersh
"Death
SNASP SOE
Mozambique
Sovnarkom
Soviet Council of People's
SPD SR
German Social-Democratic
SS SSD
Nazi "protection squad'Ysecurity service
S&T
Scientific
SDI
SDKPiL
SDP SED
signals
(UK) Germany)
to Spies!" (Soviet military counterintelligence, 1943-46)
security service
Special Operations Executive
(UK)
Commissars Party
Socialist Revolutionaries
GDR
security service ("Stasi")
and technical/technological
intelligence
Abbreviations Used
Text
xv
GHQ/high command
Stavka
Wartime
StB
Czechoslovak security service
TUC
Trades Union Congress (UK)
Soviet
in
UB
Polish security service, predecessor of
UDBA
Yugoslav security service
UNITA
Union
USC
Unitarian Service Commission
U-2
American spy plane
VMS
Supreme Monarchist Council (White Russian emigre group) Soviet Military Industrial Commission
VPK
WES WiN
for the Total Liberation of
SB
Angola
West European Secretariat (Comintern) "Freedom and Independence" (last active remnant of Polish
Home Army)
WPC
World Peace Council
X Line
Scientific
and technological
intelligence
residencies
ZANU ZAPU
Zimbabwe African National Union Zimbabwe African People's Union
ZOMO
Polish paramilitary police
department
in
KGB
Transliteration of
Russian Names
we have followed
In transliterating Russian names,
a simplified version
Names and BBC Monitoring Service. Simplifications include the substitution of "y" for
of the method used by the U.S. Board on Geographic
"iy" in surnames (not Bokiy, Gorskiy, Agranovskiy, but Boky, Gorsky,
Agranovsky), and of "i" for "iy" signify a soft sign (in all possible
is
omitted.
combinations)
names (not Georgiy, Valeriy, The apostrophe ordinarily used to
in first
Yuriy, but Georgi, Valeri, Yuri).
The "y" between is
the letters "i" and "e"
omitted too (not Ageyev, Dmitriyevich,
but Ageev, Dmitrievich). In a few cases where a mildly deviant spelling of a well-known
Russian name has become firmly established in Western publications, we
have retained that version, Joseph
e.g.:
Khrushchev, Beria, Evdokia (Petrova),
(Stalin), Izvestia, Zinoviev,
and the names of Tsars.
xvii
Europe 1942
ALGERIA
Postwar Europe Political
boundaries after 1948
ALGERIA
KGB
Introduction
Most authors can tion,
expect, sooner or later, to
though they should not expect
Andrew's turn arrived
in
it
to
make an
happen
accurate predic-
often. Christopher
October 1985 with the publication of his book
Secret Service: The
Making of
While writing Secret
Service,
the British Intelligence
Community.
he had come to disbelieve the widespread
assumption, largely derived from worldwide media interest in the So-
Cambridge University (where Andrew teaches and defection remained more of a problem for the West than for the Kremlin. The career of Oleg Penkovsky, the Anglo-American mole in the GRU (Soviet military intelligence agency) who played a vital role in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, was, he suspected, far from unique. In what Andrew's family assures him was an uncharacteristic moment of clairvoyance, he wrote viet
moles educated
at
history), that high-level penetration
in the first edition of Secret Service: "It is unsafe to
have been no Penkovskys
since,
conclude that there
simply because their names have yet
was published, news broke of another and even more successful Penkovsky, this time in the KGB. His name was Oleg Gordievsky. A few months before he escaped from Russia in the summer of 1985, Gordievsky had been appointed KGB resident (head of station) to appear in the newspapers." Just before Secret Service 1
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
2
in
London. Since 1974 he had been working for SIS, the British Secret
known as MI6), as a penetration agent inside the KGB. In the summer of 1986 Gordievsky read Secret Service and got in touch with Andrew. As their discussions progressed over the next year, Andrew and Gordievsky were struck by the similarity of their interpretations of KGB operations. The recurrent obsession of the Intelligence Service (also
KGB,
since
its
foundation as the Cheka six weeks after the October
Revolution, with imaginary conspiracies as well as with real opponents
had become a major theme in Andrew's research. It was an obsession that Gordievsky had experienced at first hand. The most dramatic period in his career as a KGB officer had occurred in the early 1980s when the Kremlin became seriously alarmed by a nonexistent Western plan for a nuclear first strike. Gordievsky was closely involved in the largest intelligence operation in Soviet history, an unprecedented worldwide collaboration between the KGB and the GRU, code-named
RYAN,
which sought to uncover the West's nuclear plot by such methods as monitoring the stocks in British blood banks, the number of animals killed in slaughterhouses, and the frequency of meetings between Mrs. Thatcher and the Queen. bizarre
The main problem confronting tried to research the history of total inaccessibility,
all
historians
KGB
who,
like
foreign operations
even in the Gorbachev
era,
Andrew, had had been the
of the records of
its
foreign intelligence arm, the First Chief Directorate (FCD). Gor-
many of these records over a period of twenty-three way around that apparently insuperable problem. As
dievsky's access to
years offered a
Andrew
discovered at their
deep interest
in
KGB
first
meeting, Gordievsky had long had a
history as well as in
its
current operations. In
1980 he had been responsible for preparing the sections of a highly classified in-house history of the First
KGB operations in
Chief Directorate, dealing with
and Australasia. He had found the research more interesting than the writing. There were many things that it was politically impossible to say about foreign Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia,
intelligence operations even in a classified
tions apply to the present volume,
began collaborating it
in the late
KGB history. No such inhibi-
on which Andrew and Gordievsky
summer of 1987. KGB officers will find own in-house histories and, the authors
a good deal franker than their
more informative. Though this history has been written by Andrew, it is based on combined research, follows interpretations arrived at together in many hope,
Introduction
and represents the authors'
detailed discussions,
draws on the
3
KGB, on
secret archives of the
a wide variety of Western libraries
long experience of the
joint conclusions. It
other source material in
and archives, and on Gordievsky's
FCD and KGB residencies abroad. After a year's
training in 1962-63, Gordievsky spent nine years at the Center, the
KGB's Moscow
headquarters (1963-65 and 1970-72) and the Copen-
hagen residency (1966-70) organizing operations by
KGB
illegals
(agents operating under false identities and not protected by diplomatic
immunity). For the next thirteen years he worked in political
gence (PR)
in
intelli-
Copenhagen (1973-78), the Center (1978-82), and Lon-
don (1982-85).
The both the
decisive
moment
Gordievsky's growing alienation from
in
KGB and the Soviet system came in the summer of 1968 with Warsaw Pact and
the invasion of Czechoslovakia by forces of the
the
crushing of the freedoms that had begun to flower in the Prague Spring.
His ideas were similar to those that swept through Eastern Europe twenty years
later, in
the 1989 year of revolutions: the belief that the
Communist one-party in the
how
Brezhnev
to fight for
its
KGB officer,
for the West. officials.
to
intolerance,
in-
Like every Soviet dissident
opponents impotent. By the time he returned for
second tour of duty
him, as a
liberties.
era, however, Gordievsky had to face the dilemma of democracy within a political system that had become
expert at rendering his
inexorably
leads
state
humanity, and the destruction of
in
Copenhagen
the best
way
in 1973,
to carry
he had decided that for
on that
fight
was
to
work
Gordievsky began to look for contacts with Western
After a period of mutual sounding-out, he began full-time
collaboration with SIS late in 1974. In the course of Gordievsky's
widely and as deeply into
FCD
work
for the West, he delved as
records as was possible without unac-
KGB battle order has made of KGB residents in major Western
ceptable risk. His detailed research on possible the unprecedented
lists
capitals that appear as appendices to this volume.
long discussions with senior cials.
KGB
officers,
Gordievsky was frequently surprised
simply by sitting in the
offices
He
also
had many
diplomats, and Party at
how much he
offi-
learned
of important apparatchiks. All had desks
covered with the serried ranks of telephones that had become a muchprized Soviet status symbol. In the early 1980s Gordievsky paid regular visits to the office
of the deputy head of the
FCD
responsible for European intelligence
operations, Viktor Fyodorovich Grushko. In order to speak to
Grushko
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
4
for ten minutes,
Gordievsky sometimes had to spend over an hour
his office while the great
several of his
in
man dealt with major problems of the day over
dozen telephones. The most senior Party leader
whom
Gordievsky briefed on current problems was Mikhail Sergeevich Gorfirst visit to Britain in December 1984, months before becoming general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, he was given three or four intelligence reports a day, most of them prepared by Gordievsky. Gorbachev also gave his views on some of the priorities affecting the future work of both the Soviet embassy and the KGB residency in London. He must later have reflected on the irony of being briefed for his first talks in Western Europe
bachev. During Gorbachev's three
by an intelligence
Among
working
officer
the aspects of
KGB
Andrew and Gordievsky
for SIS.
history that
had most interested both
before their collaboration began were the
Cambridge moles. Cambridge University, at which Andrew teaches, has the unique though dubious distinction of having provided some of the ablest twentieth-century recruits to both the British intelligence community and its main opponent, the KGB. (Contrary to the impression given by some accounts, however, British re-
careers of the
cruits
have been far more numerous.) After the release of the popular
Western film The Magnificent Seven recruits to the
in 1960, the leading
KGB became known in the Center as the
Five." Portraits of the recruiters and the
first
Cambridge
"Magnificent
Cam"Memory Room"
controllers of the
bridge moles have a place of honor in the secret
where the FCD commemorates its heroes. Gordievsky followed with particular interest the career of the most successful of the Magnificent Five, Kim Philby, who defected to
Moscow
in
January 1963 while he was
When
in the
middle of his
first-year
Copenhagen ten years later, Gordievsky bought a copy of a book by Patrick Seale and Maureen McConville, Philby: The Long Road to Moscow, and sent it to intelligence training course.
stationed in
Philby via a friend in the Center, Albert Ivanovich Kozlov. Philby read it
and returned
English on the
it
to
Gordievsky with the handwritten dedication
flyleaf:
To
my
Don V
dear colleague Oleg:
believe anything
which you see
about
me
in print!
Kim
Philby
in
Introduction
5
Gordievsky's view of Philby was indeed quite different from the glam-
KGB
orous image of the master spy that the print.
While on leave
in
Moscow
in 1977,
sought to popularize in
Gordievsky attended Philby's
lecture at the Center, given to an audience of about three hundred.
first
Philby spoke in English. 'This year," he began, "is a very special one.
Not only does Revolution;
mark
it
the sixtieth anniversary of the Great October
also sees the fiftieth anniversary of the Soviet Football
it
Association." There were two bursts of laughter from the audience:
immediately from those
who understood
English, after the translation
from the remainder.
Having disarmed
his audience, Philby then
went on to make an
KGB
oblique but devastating criticism of his treatment by the the fourteen years since his defection. "In the course of said,
M
am
visiting
And now,
yours for the
During
his
at last, after fourteen years in
first
talents, Philby
Moscow,
time."
spasmodic meetings with Western journalists, even
on the rare occasions when he criticized the never revealed the
full
KGB's
neglect of his
He sought to KGB. During his
extent of his hurt.
give the impression that he held senior rank in the last
during
career," he
have visited the headquarters of some of the world's leading
I
intelligence services. I
my
interview with Phillip Knightley a few
months before
his death,
confirmed a report that he already held the rank of colonel of his defection. But
when asked by Knightley
view whether he had since become a
KGB
at the
he
time
same
inter-
general, he gave a
more
later in the
equivocal reply. "Strictly speaking," he told Knightley, "there are no military ranks in the
KGB,
but
I
do have the
privileges of a general."
KGB
(Gor-
dievsky was a colonel at the time of his defection), and there are
KGB
As Philby was generals. 2
well aware, there are military ranks in the
But to
his personal chagrin, Philby,
existence, never rose
Moscow
in
though he led a privileged
above the rank of "agent."
When
he arrived
in
January 1963, he confidently expected to be given a senior He was dismayed to discover for the first time that
post at the Center.
Western agents, however successful, were never allowed the
KGB. They
remained, like Philby, simple agents.
code name
in 1988, Philby's
As Philby Western agents.
When
rank
in
to his death
Center was Agent Tom.
late,
the
KGB
never fully trusts
its
January 1963, his closest friend Burgess, whose bizarre lifestyle upset the KGB even he defected
Moscow, Guy more than the Foreign
in
in the
discovered too
officer
Up
repeated requests to
in
was dying from alcoholism. Despite the Center, Philby was not allowed to see him Office,
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
6
before his death in August 1963. In his will Burgess
left
Philby his
some furniture, and £2000. Philby himself was always closely watched when he traveled to other Soviet Bloc countries. When he visited Cuba, he was required to travel by ship to library, his winter overcoats,
eliminate the minimal risk that he might change planes in transit.
During
his early years in
some of his disappointment
Moscow, Philby was
able to suppress
went through the lengthy, elaborate
as he
process of debriefing, recording every detail of every intelligence officer
and operation he had ever encountered, and dealing with supplementary questions. He was also encouraged to help ghostwrite the memoirs of the leading Soviet
Gordon
own
illegal in
postwar Britain,
Lonsdale), published in the
West
and
{alias
to prepare his
propagandist memoirs, eventually published after long delibera-
tion at the Center in 1969.
To compensate
he was given the consolation of a
series of
for his lack of officer rank,
awards from the intelligence
services of the Soviet Bloc, beginning with the
This
Konon Molody
in 1965,
made him, he
Order of Lenin
told Knightley, in effect a Soviet knight:
there are different sorts of Ks, but the Order of Lenin
is
in 1965.
"Of course
equivalent to
one of the better ones."
By
fallen into a
what
had had no idea
1967, however, with his debriefing complete, Philby
deep depression, convinced "that the
KGB
my real potential was." His private life too was falling apart. Moscow he formed
After
Donald Maclean, whom he had scarcely met since leaving Cambridge. That friendship ended in 1965 when Philby's third wife left him and Melinda Maclean moved in. Within a year or so that relationship too was on the rocks. Philby roamed around Russia on a series of almost suicidal drinking bouts, which sometimes left him oblivious of where he was, uncertain whether it was night or day. Unlike Donald Maclean, who eventually drank himself to death (though much more slowly than Burgess), Philby was rescued from alcoholic oblivion by Rufa, "the woman I had been waiting for all my life." They were married in 1971. arriving in
a friendship with
Contacts with Philby merely confirmed Gordievsky in his decision during the early 1970s to begin working for the West. Philby tried
desperately to persuade himself, as he looked over
windows of
his
flat,
the solid foundations of the future
Gordievsky
it
Moscow from
the
that he could, as he claimed in his memoirs, "see I
glimpsed at Cambridge." 3
To
seemed, on the contrary, that the gulf between the myth
image of the Soviet just society that had inspired Philby when he graduated from the university and the somber, stagnant reality of
Introduction
7
Brezhnev's Russia was unbridgeable. There were moments himself seemed to recognize the immensity of the gulf.
KGB
When
he
criti-
would commonly "I'm not responsible," thus provoking the retort from Philby:
cized failings of the Soviet system, reply:
when Philby
officers
"You're not responsible? Every Soviet citizen says he's not responsible.
The
truth
is
you're
Though West, fourth
all
responsible!"
the Center sought to popularize Philby's career in the
did not welcome the public exposure of
it
member
watched
in
Anthony
Blunt, the
of the Magnificent Five, in 1979. During the 1980s
it
bemusement the highly publicized hunt by the British media
for the Fifth
Man
along a series of false
trails.
Imaginary moles, as well
as genuine Soviet agents, multiplied alarmingly in a series of bestselling
books.
Among
those mistakenly accused were Frank Birch, Sefton
Delmer, Andrew Gow, Sir Roger Hollis, ell,
and Arthur Pigou,
all
Guy
Liddell,
Graham Mitch-
deceased; Sir Rudolf Peierls who, despite
claims that he too was dead, turned out to be alive and sued successfully for libel;
Lord Rothschild, the victim
endo rather than open accusation,
until his death in
in case
1990 of innu-
he also sued; and Dr. Wilfred
Mann, who did not sue but published a convincing explanation of his By the end of the 1980s, the hunt for the Fifth Man had begun to resemble Monty Python's quest for the Holy Grail. 4 innocence.
Had
the
KGB been less addicted to conspiracy theory,
it
might
have welcomed the confusion generated by the media mole hunt and
damage done by
MI5, which became the butt was an outstation of the KGB. Instead, there were frequent suggestions in the Center that the whole mole hunt was some sinister British plot. Gordievsky had just moved to the British desk in the Third Department in 1981 when Chapman Pincher's sensational allegation that Sir Roger Hollis, director-general of MI5 from 1956 to 1965, was a Soviet mole burst onto the front pages the
it
to the reputation of
of numerous jokes suggesting that
it
of the British press. 5
Gordievsky had already researched the history of Soviet penetration of Britain while
working on the 1980
FCD official history. After
the accusations against Hollis, however, he spent hours discussing the
case with Ivan Aleksandrovich Shishkin, head of Faculty (Counterintelligence) at the tute.
FCD training school,
Shishkin was one of the
FCD's
the
Number Two
Andropov
Insti-
leading British specialists and had
London as deputy resident and head of the KR (counterintelLondon from 1966 to 1970. He was adamant that there was not a word of truth in the allegations against Hollis. One of Gorserved in
ligence) line in
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
8
dievsky's friends in the Center, Albert Kozlov, section chief in the
Third Department, had also investigated the Hollis case. missed
it
He
too dis-
as absurd.
In 1984 the Hollis story once again hit British headlines after
him were repeated
the charges against
Wright, a retired
MI 5
officer
in a television interview
by Peter
with a penchant for conspiracy theory,
who had been
the main source for Chapman Pincher's allegations three At the time Gordievsky was on leave in Moscow in the middle of his London posting. He read a KGB telegram about Wright's allegations when visiting the head of the British desk, Igor Viktorovich
years earlier.
PR
Titov, formerly in charge of the
line (Political Intelligence) in
London and deputy resident there until his expulsion in the previous "The story is ridiculous," Titov told him. "There's some mysterious, internal British intrigue at the bottom of all this." Dmitri Anyear.
dreevich Svetanko, consultant and a former deputy head of the
FCD
Third Department, agreed.
Gordievsky found
it
deeply ironic that British media interest in
an imaginary Soviet mole should reach
when
the level of real
KGB
over half a century. The
its
peak
at the very
moment
penetration in Britain was lower than for
London residency
files
indicated that the
KGB
had had no source inside either MI 5 or SIS since the arrest of George Blake in 1961. of the reasons
It
seems never to have occurred to Peter Wright that one
why
the government dismissed the charges against Hollis
with such confidence was that SIS had the
its
own
well-placed source inside
KGB.
Gordievsky's career as an intelligence
climax in 1985. agent.
And
He had
yet at the
officer
reached an astonishing
completed eleven years as an SIS penetration
same time
As head
his reputation in
PR
Moscow Center had
and deputy resident in London since 1983, his political reporting had won high praise. The briefings he provided during Gorbachev's visit in December 1984 set the seal on his success in London. In January 1985 he was summoned to the Center and told that he had been appointed London resident to never stood higher.
take over
when
of the
line
the acting resident, Leonid Yefremovich Nikitenko,
Moscow
in May. During his visit to the Center, Gordievsky was initiated into the resident's personal ciphers needed for top-secret communications with Moscow.
returned to
On
Friday,
May
17, 1985,
London, summoning him back
to
Gordievsky received a telegram
Moscow
in
to be officially confirmed as
Introduction
9
London
resident. But for his ability to surmount the crisis that folGordievsky lowed, would not have survived, and this book could not have been written. On the face of it, despite the short notice, there was
a
nothing suspicious about the telegram.
was
to
of the
It informed Gordievsky that he have discussions with Viktor Mikhailovich Chebrikov, chairman
KGB
and member of the Politburo, and with General Vladimir
Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov, long-serving head of the First Chief Directorate,
who was
to succeed
Chebrikov as chairman
in 1988.
Viktor Ivanovich Popov, the irascible Soviet ambassador in
London, was all
clearly impressed.
On
reading the telegram, Popov was
smiles. Despite earlier clashes with Gordievsky,
how
he gave him avun-
him Moscow. Gordievsky's sixth sense as an intelligence officer, however, told him that something was wrong. As he read the telegram, he felt a cold sweat in his palms, and his vision briefly clouded over. Soon after his talk with Popov a second telegram arrived briefing Gordievsky on the subjects Chebrikov and Kryuchkov would want to discuss with him. Gordievsky had the sense of a carefully baited trap awaiting him in Moscow. He told himself that the stress of his double life must be making him oversuspicious. Professional pride as a dedicated British penetration agent in the KGB persuaded him to suppress his doubts and return to Moscow. Saturday, May 18, was one of the most hectic days in Gordievsky's three years at the London residency. As well as making
cular advice on
to handle the important meetings that awaited
in
arrangements for his departure and preparing briefings for Chebrikov
and Kryuchkov, he had to deliver £5,000 to a KGB illegal. A residency technician had constructed an imitation brick with a hollow center just big enough to contain a plastic packet stuffed with 250 £20 notes. Gordievsky placed the brick in a plastic carrier bag and took his two small daughters, Maria and Anna, to play in Coram's Fields in Bloomsbury, near the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. While playing with the
girls,
Gordievsky dropped the brick on a grassy verge
between a path and a fence on the northern edge of the park. On Sunday morning, May 19, Gordievsky was picked up from his apartment in Kensington High Street by a Soviet embassy Ford
Granada and driven
to
Heathrow
to catch the Aeroflot flight to
Mos-
cow. Since the trip was supposed to be a short one, his family stayed
London. At Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport he had his first clear indication that something was wrong. The KGB immigration officer in
took some time checking his diplomatic passport, then in Gordievsky's
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
10
presence
made
a telephone call to report his arrival.
mildly ominous that there was no
KGB
also
It
seemed
car to meet him, though he
to the wrong The driver already had two who turned out to be West German diplomats return-
later discovered that a car
had been sent but had gone
terminal. Gordievsky took a taxi instead.
other passengers,
Moscow
ing to their
flat.
When
Gordievsky
identified himself as a
West Germans became visibly agitated, apparently fearing some sort of trap, and asked to be driven straight to their embassy. Gordievsky wondered whether the KGB watchers outside the embassy would find it suspicious that he was in a taxi with two West Soviet diplomat, the
German
diplomats.
When
he got back to his apartment at 109 Leninsky Prospekt, it had been searched. He and two of the three locks on the door. This time
he knew even before opening the door that his wife Leila used only
he found
all
three locked. "Typical," thought Gordievsky.
KGB house-
breakers were technically highly proficient but notoriously heavy drinkers
and given
to lapses in concentration.
sign of disturbance.
On
he found a small hole tissues,
A first inspection
revealed no
a second look around the bathroom, however,
in the
cellophane covering an unopened box of
where a probe had been
Gordievsky knew that the
inserted.
search of the apartment would have uncovered no clues except a pile of books purchased in the West (including virtually the complete works of Solzhenitsyn) and hidden beneath his bed; though seditious, they
were of the kind purchased
unofficially
still
officially
by many Soviet
diplomats. Before going to bed, he called the head of the Third Depart-
ment in the First Chief Directorate, Nikolai Petrovich Gribin, to announce his return. Gribin said little, but his tone of voice seemed cooler than usual.
Next morning, Monday, May 20, a junior KGB officer, Vladimir Chernov, who had been expelled from Britain two years earlier, arrived at the apartment in his Lada to drive Gordievsky to the First Chief Directorate building at Yasenevo, near the Moscow ring road. Gordievsky was given a vacant room in the Third Department. When
he asked about the promised meetings with Chebrikov and Kryuchkov, he was told to wait. "You'll be informed when they're ready to see you." For a week nothing happened. Gordievsky waited each day until
about 8 p.m. for a telephone
call to fix the
a series of excuses. Kryuchkov, he a series of conferences at mittee;
KGB
was
meetings but was given only
told,
had a very busy week with
headquarters and at the Central
Chebrikov could not see him
until
he had
first
Com-
met Kryuchkov.
Introduction
Gordievsky operations,
filled in
11
the time improving his briefs on Britain and
and checking
statistics
KGB
on the British economy and armed
forces.
Gribin tried to persuade Gordievsky to spend the weekend with
him and
his wife at a
KGB
could see his mother and
To Gribin's visible irritation GorMoscow apartment instead so that he
dacha.
dievsky insisted on staying in his
Most of the weekend conversation was first year at the Church Kensington High Street, and Gordievsky
sister.
about his family in London. Maria was in her of England primary school in
was proud of her English. He
come home one day and
told his
mother and
sister
how
she had
recited, in perfect English, the Lord's Prayer.
in Moscow was more eventful At about noon on Monday, May 27, he received a phone call in his room at the Third Department from General Grushko, deputy head of the First Chief Directorate, to tell him he was being summoned to an important meeting to discuss a new strategy for Soviet penetration of Britain with high-level agents. They were driven in
Gordievsky's second week back
than the
first.
Grushko's black Volga limousine to a
where a sandwich lunch was waiting
KGB
dacha a few miles away,
for them.
"What about
a drink?"
asked Grushko. Gordievsky hesitated for a moment, remembering Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign. But since Grushko seemed to expect it,
he accepted.
A
servant produced a half-liter bottle of
Armenian
brandy and poured them a glass each.
To
Gordievsky's surprise, Grushko began asking questions
about his family. In the middle of the sandwiches, they were joined by
General Golubev and Colonel Budanov of Directorate intelligence),
nal leaks.
A
whose
(Counter-
second bottle of Armenian brandy was produced, and filled
from
he had been drugged. "I
felt,"
Gordievsky's glass
He began
K
responsibilities included the investigation of inter-
talking quickly
Almost immediately, he realized that he recalls, "that I was a different man."
it.
and garrulously, conscious that one part of
to lose control while another part told him beyond him. As his head spun, he noticed Grushko leave the room while Golubev and Budanov began to fire questions his
mind was urging him not
the effort might be
at
him.
Gordievsky was asked for
his assessment of previous Soviet
French mole, code-named Farewell by Directorate T (responsible for scientific and
defectors, in particular about a
the French, in the
FCD
technological espionage),
who had
Then the questioning became more
been executed two years
personal.
"How
could you
earlier.
listen to
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
12
your daughter saying the Lord's Prayer?" he was suddenly asked. "I
know I'm drugged and
finding
it
hard to think straight," Gordievsky
means they listened in on my conversation with my mother and sister on the weekend. So my flat must be bugged." Next, Gordievsky was challenged about the works of Solzhenitsyn and Western publications beneath his bed. "How could you bring those anti-Soviet books over the border?" he was asked. The next stage of the interrogation was much more aggressive. Gordievsky was directly accused of working for the British. He was told himself, "but that
name of a British diplomat. "That's the man who recruited demanded Golubev. "You saw your British friends before you returned to Moscow, didn't you?" Then Gordievsky was left by himself. Some time later Golubev returned. "Confess now!" he told Gordievsky. "Don't you remember? You confessed a moment ago. given the
you, isn't it?"
Confess again!" Gordievsky
felt his
head
reeling,
and heard himself as
if
from a distance, denying that he had any confession to make. "No,
I
didn't," he repeated mechanically.
"No,
didn't."
I
He remembered
nothing more until he woke up next morning with a splitting headache in
one of the dacha bedrooms.
Two coffee.
dacha servants, one male, one female, were ready with
Gordievsky drank cup
he began to
"I'm done
after cup, but the
day
recall the events of the previous
There's no
way
headache remained. As his first
thought was:
glimmer of hope returned. At about 9:30 a.m. Golubev and Budanov arrived at the for.
dacha, acting as
if
out." Gradually, however, a
the interrogation on the previous day had been
simply an after-dinner conversation. Golubev soon departed but Buda-
nov remained.
Though Gordievsky remembers Budanov sinister
KGB
harmless.
officers
he ever met, his
At some point
stationed in Britain.
first
in his career
"What
parts of
as one of the
most
questions seemed relatively
Budanov had
evidently been
England have you visited?" he
asked. Gordievsky replied that because of the usual restrictions Soviet diplomats (or side
London,
KGB
his trips
on
posing as diplomats) traveling out-
officers
had been largely confined to party conferences and Harrogate. "Harrogate?" said Budanov.
in Blackpool, Brighton,
"Never heard of overconfident continued:
it."
Then
last night,"
"You
his tone changed.
he
said.
also told us that
"You were
arrogant and
Gordievsky apologized. Budanov
we
are recreating the atmosphere of
the purges, renewing the witch hunt and spy
mania of 1937. That
is
not
13
Introduction
true. In
time
I
shall
shortly to drive
Back
prove to you that you are wrong.
you home."
in his
apartment, Gordievsky telephoned Grushko. "I'm
come
sorry I'm not well enough to
began.
Grushko accepted
his excuse.
into the department today," he
"I'm also sorry
if I
out of turn yesterday," he continued, "but those two
along were very strange."
"On
Grushko knew
Gordievsky spent the recovering at ing."
home last
stilted but,
Gordievsky
re-
was being recorded. Tuesday and the whole of Wednesday
that their conversation
rest of
own
and, in his
By Wednesday evening,
events of the
said anything
men who came
the contrary," replied Grushko, "they're
very nice people." The phrase sounded flected,
A car will come
two days and
words, "thinking, thinking, think-
had
his depression
lifted slightly.
his success so far in resisting the
The
charges
him suggested that he might be given a breathing space before sentence of death was passed on him. "Maybe, after all," he thought, "I can find some way out." A generation earlier he would simply have been liquidated. Nowadays the KGB had to have evidence. On Thursday, May 30, Gordievsky returned to his room in the Third Department. Soon he was summoned to Grushko's office, where he found Grushko flanked by Golubev and a glum-looking Gribin, Gordievsky's department head. Grushko told him: against
all day with ComYou know that you've been deceiving us for a long time. That's why your mission in Great Britain will be terminated. Your family is returning to Moscow immedi-
Yesterday we discussed your case almost rade Kryuchkov.
But we've decided you can continue to work in the KGB, though probably not in the First Chief Directorate.
ately.
What's your reaction to that? Gordievsky had no doubt that the proposal was simply a ruse intended to give
him just enough rope
to
hang
himself.
He was under suspended
sentence of death but, since the interrogation in the dacha had been a
was being put under surveillance and given a period at liberty which it was hoped he would be detected trying to contact British
failure,
in
intelligence or
would provide other compromising evidence. With the
advantage of hindsight, he saw that the emphasis put by General Golubev on trivia such as Maria's Lord's Prayer and the books beneath his
bed seemed to show that the case against him rested so far chiefly on circumstantial evidence.
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
14
Since his only chance of survival was to play for time, Gor-
dievsky decided to show himself as cooperative as possible.
He
apolo-
gized for falling asleep during his questioning in the dacha. "I think,"
he
must have been something wrong
said, disingenuously, "that there
with the food." General Golubev, whose sense of the absurd was defective
even by the standards of the
KGB,
indignantly disagreed.
He
defended the quality of the dacha lunch sandwich by sandwich. "The
ham was
good," he maintained. "The salmon roe was also very good.
So was the cheese." Gordievsky did not challenge Golubev's eulogy of the sandwiches.
don't
"As
know what
for accusations about
you're talking about. But
the First Chief Directorate
and a gentleman." In like
my
is
work," he continued, "I
if
to be terminated,
found
retrospect, he
you decide I'll
take
it
my work
like
an
in
officer
his use of that final phrase,
Golubev's defense of the sandwiches, a mildly comic interlude
in
a desperate struggle for survival.
General Grushko seemed relieved by Gordievsky's response
and glad
to avoid the
embarrassment of either an open admission or a
vigorous denial of treason in his
Gordievsky and shook
office.
his hand.
to deliver the "anti-Soviet
He
"Thank you, thank you," he
did,
however, instruct Gordievsky
books" beneath
Had Gordievsky
told
his
bed to the First Chief
trial, they would no doubt have been featured as an exhibit. Gribin, the Third Department chief who a few months before had been full of praise for Gordievsky's work, avoided shaking his hand. "I don't know what to suggest," he said. "Just take it in a philosophical way." After his escape to England, Gordievsky thought of calling Gribin to tell him, "I took your advice. I took it in a philosophical way." Gordievsky was given leave until August 3. He calculated that the cat-and-mouse game would continue at least until the end of his leave. He spent a bittersweet fortnight during June with Leila, Maria, and Anna in their Moscow apartment, his enjoyment of family life made more intense by knowledge of the separation that would follow. The rest of the family planned to leave for Leila's father's dacha in Transcaucasia on June 20. Gordievsky longed to go with them. But, knowing that he would need time to organize his escape, he accepted instead a place that was offered him in a KGB "sanatorium" (a kind of holiday hotel) at Semyonovskoye, once the location of Stalin's second dacha, a hundred kilometers south of Moscow. Shortly before he left, a former colleague from the same block of apartments, Boris Bocharov, asked him: "What happened in London, old chap? We had to recall all
Directorate library.
been brought to
Introduction
Our
the illegals.
operations are ruined.
15
I
heard a rumor that your
deputy has defected." Next time he met Gordievsky, Bocharov had clearly been
warned and avoided speaking
Gordievsky spent exercise, reading,
rium had
and planning
to share their
roommate was
a
KGB
to him.
KGB sanatorium taking gentle
his time at the
his escape.
Most
guests at the sanato-
rooms. By accident or design, Gordievsky's
border guard. The surveillance carried out by
KGB
personnel was a good deal less sophisticated than in the Whenever Gordievsky went jogging, he noticed the same watchers pretending to urinate into the same bushes and using other conspicuous forms of concealment. He privately nicknamed one local local
capital.
KGB
man
with an apparently inexhaustible bladder Inspector Clou-
Gordievsky studied what maps and
seau. In the sanatorium library
guides he could of the frontier region that he planned to cross, but he did so standing at the shelves in order not to attract attention by taking
them
to read in his
room.
He made
unrelated to his escape plans. before he
left
a point of borrowing books entirely
The
KGB officer to speak to him him what on earth he was doing
last
the sanatorium asked
War of 1877-78. Gordievsky was replied that he filling gaps in his historical knowledge. Since his escape that book will have been searched in vain for clues by Moscow reading a book on the Russo-Turkish
Center.
Gordievsky's family's departure for the Transcaucasus was unexpectedly postponed until June 30, and his children were able to
him for a day. It was the last time he saw Maria and Anna. When came to an end and he put them on the train back to Moscow, he hugged them for so long that he only just managed to squeeze visit
the day
through the
train's sliding
Twice during pretexts to visit
doors as
it left
his stay in the
Moscow
in
the station.
sanatorium Gordievsky found
order to contact SIS.
He
covered the ten
miles to the nearest station on foot, using the long walk to plan the even
longer walk on the frontier that would be part of his escape route.
Remarkably,
his contacts with SIS in
unobserved by the
KGB. On
Moscow seem
to have
gone
of his visits he saw his wife for and Anna were spending the day in his mother's dacha near Moscow). He said goodbye to Leila in a Moscow supermarket, where they went shopping before Gordievsky caught the train back to the sanatorium. It was one of the most poithe
first
the last time before his escape (Maria
gnant moments in Gordievsky's
life.
was that Leila could not know the
What made
significance
it
it
almost unbearable
held for them both.
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
16
She kissed him
briefly
on the
lips.
Gordievsky
tried to smile.
himself saying softly, "That might have been a dievsky has remembered those words
many
bit
He found
more tender." Gor-
times since his escape. So,
no doubt, has Leila. The hardest part of the preparations for his escape was his inability to take his family into his confidence, and the knowledge that his escape might be followed by several years of separation. The alternative to separation, however, was a few more weeks of freedom followed by execution as a traitor and even greater heartbreak for his family.
On Wednesday, sanatorium to his his escape to the
KGB
July 10, Gordievsky returned from the
KGB
Moscow apartment. During the fortnight or so before
West he
laid a series of false trails intended to confuse
and week following his intended departure from Moscow. He also spent a good deal of time working on his unreliable Lada car to prepare it for a compulsory technical inspection. Gordievsky's watchers were used to seeing him leave his apartment on Leninsky Prospekt to go jogging and did not usually follow him on his runs. At 4 p.m. on Friday, July 19, he went jogging, wearing his usual old trousers and a sweatshirt, and carrying a plastic bag whose contents must later have caused intense speculation at the Center. Gordievsky never returned from his run. A few days later, after a complicated surveillance, arranging several meetings with his friends
relatives for the
journey, he crossed the Soviet frontier. Since others
may have
to leave
Union by the same route, he is unwilling to identify it. Gordievsky compares his sensation on reaching safety in the West to the moment in The Wizard ofOz when the film changes from black-and-white to Technicolor. Against all the odds, he had escaped certain execution by the KGB. For the first time in Soviet history, a KGB officer already identified as a Western mole had escaped across the Russian border. But even as Gordievsky was being congratulated by his friends, his first thoughts were for the family he had had to leave behind. The KGB still takes hostages. As this book goes to press, Leila, Maria, and Anna are among them. They are remembered in the authe Soviet
thors' dedication.
1 Tsarist Origins
(1565-1917)
Russia's
first
political police, the distant ancestor of today's
the Oprichnina, founded in 1565 by Ivan the Terrible, the
Duke
KGB, was first
Grand
crowned Tsar. The six thousand Oprichniki dressed in black, rode on black horses, and carried on their saddles the emblems of a dog's head and a broom, symbolizing their mission to sniff out and sweep away treason. As in Stalin's Russia, most of the treason that they swept away existed only in the minds of the Oprichniki and their ruler. Their victims included whole cities, chief among them Novgorod, most of whose inhabitants were massacred in a five-week of
Muscovy
to be
orgy of cruelty in 1570. Ivan himself oscillated between periods of
barbarous sadism and periods of prayer and repentance. After a sevenyear reign of terror, the Oprichnina was abolished in 1572. Almost four centuries later the victims of Stalin's
NKVD
sometimes called their
persecutors Oprichniki behind their backs. Stalin praised the "progressive role" of the
the at
Oprichnina in centralizing state power and reducing
power of the boyar
aristocracy, but criticized Ivan for wasting time
prayer that could have been better spent liquidating more boyars.
The next powerful organization founded
to deal with political
crime was Peter the Great's Preobrazhensky Prikaz, tiously at the
1
set up so surreptiend of the seventeenth century that the exact date of its
17
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
18
foundation
still
remains a mystery. Like the Oprichnina, the Preobra-
zhensky Prikaz foreshadowed, on a smaller
scale, the climate
of fear
who perished chambers ranged from nobles who had tried insignificant drunks who had dared to make
and denunciation engendered by Stalin's Terror. Those in its cellars
and torture
to evade state service to
jokes about the Tsar. 2 Peter
remembered today both
and whose new capital of St. Petersburg (now Leningrad) was intended "to open a window onto Europe." But he was also a ruler of fearsome cruelty. His son and heir, the Tsarevich Aleksei, who fled abroad, was lured back to Russia and tortured to death. outside the Soviet
Union
is
chiefly
as the
modernizer of the Russian
inside
state,
Like Ivan's Oprichnina, Peter's Preobrazhensky Prikaz did not survive
its
creator.
tently, there
Though
political persecution
was no further attempt
to
continued intermit-
found a specialized
political
police until after the unsuccessful Decembrist Rising of 1825, a century after Peter's death.
movement. Unlike Tsar but
The Decembrists were
earlier rebels, they
Russia's
at replacing the
—
new political system either a republic or a monarchy in which serfdom would be abolished. In
at creating a
constitutional
revolutionary
first
aimed not simply
—
1826, in order to forestall further risings, Tsar Nicholas
I
(1825-55)
established the Third Section of his Imperial Chancellery as his political police.
3
Both Nicholas and the Third Section's first head, Count Benckfrom the brutal precedents of the Oprichnina and Preobrazhensky Prikaz. The incongruous symbol of the Third Section was a handkerchief allegedly presented by the Tsar and preserved in a glass case in its archives. According to a pious but plausible tradition, Nicholas told Benckendorff, "Here is your whole
endorff, sought to distance themselves
The more tears you wipe away with this handkerchief, the more faithfully will you serve my aims." This eccentric metaphor suited
directive.
both the Tsar's grandiloquent self-image as "father-commander" of his people and the Third Section's view of itself as the "moral physician" of the nation. But the major preoccupation of the Third Section was
what the all its
KGB later called "ideological subversion": political dissent in KGB today, in order to keep track of dissent,
forms. Like the
believed
it
it
necessary to monitor public opinion. Benckendorff prepared
annual Surveys of Public Opinion, later entitled "The Moral and cal Situation in Russia." "Public opinion," declared the "is for the
mand
in
government what a topographical
time of war."
map
is
for
Politi-
1827 survey,
an army com-
19
Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)
In addition to employing a large network of informers, the head
of the Third Section also had under him a Corps of Gendarmes, several
thousand strong, charged with safeguarding state security and immedi-
and white gloves. Yet, by KGB was a small organization. Its headquarters apparat grew slowly from sixteen at its founding to forty by Nicholas ately recognizable
by
their blue tunics
standards, the Third Section
I's
death in 1855. The Third Section's heads lacked the personal brutal-
ity
of earlier political police chiefs. Alexander Herzen, the leading
political dissident of the
believe
.
.
.
post-Decembrist generation, was "ready to
that Benckendorff did not
done as head of that terrible law, which had the right to good
either;
do
all
the
harm he might have law and above the
police, being outside the
interfere in everything.
.
.
.
But he did no
he had not enough will-power, energy or heart for that."
When summoned
into Benckendorffs presence in 1 840, Herzen found "worn and tired," with "that deceptively good-natured expres4 sion which is often found in evasive and apathetic persons." Count Aleksei Orlov, who succeeded Benckendorff after his death in 1844, was his face
the brother of the leading Decembrist, General Mikhail Orlov. difficult
to
It is
imagine Stalin a century later allowing any relative of
Trotsky or Bukharin even to enter the
NKVD,
let
alone to become
its
head.
Of the 290,000
people sentenced to Siberian exile or hard labor
between 1823 and 1861, only
5 percent
had been found
guilty of politi-
and many of these were not Russian dissidents but Polish patriots opposed to Russian rule. Within Russia political dissidence was cal offenses,
still
virtually confined to a disaffected section of the educated
upper
The reign of Nicholas I nonetheless institutionalized political crime. The 1845 Criminal Code laid down draconian penalties for all class.
"persons guilty of writing and spreading written or printed works or representations intended to arouse disrespect for Sovereign Authority,
or for the personal qualities of the Sovereign, or for his government."
That code, writes Richard Pipes, is "to totalitarianism what the Magna Carta is to liberty." From 1845 to 1988, save for the period between the failed revolution of 1905 and the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, it remained a crime to question the existing political order.
The Criminal Code of 1960 punished
for the purpose of subverting or
"agitation or propaganda
weakening Soviet authority" by prison terms of up to seven years, with up to five further years of exile. Tsarism bequeathed to Bolshevism both a political culture and a legal system in which only the state had rights. 5
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
20
The Third
Section prided itself on the fact that during 1848, the
main nineteenth-century year of revolution in Western Europe, Russia remained "somnolent and at rest." The ferment in the countryside that followed the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 by Tsar Alexander
II
(1855-81) persuaded a generation of young upper-class Populists that the peasants were at last ripe for revolution. But the failure of the 1874
Pilgrimage to the People, in which earnest radical idealists toured the countryside striving vainly to rouse the peasants against Tsarism,
turned some disillusioned Populists to terrorism. The advocates of terror argued that assassination of Tsarist notables
regime and demonstrate
alize the
its
would both demor-
vulnerability to the peasants in a
terrorists, who by 1879 had banded themselves together as the Executive Committee of the People's Will, were only about thirty strong. But in a three-year campaign of bombing and assassination from 1878 to 1881 they brought the
form they could understand. The hard core of
regime close to panic, and in so doing exposed the inadequacies of the
Third Section. In 1878 General Mezentsov, chief of the gendarmes and
head controller of the Third Section, was stabbed to death
in
broad
daylight in one of the main streets of St. Petersburg. His escort, Lieuten-
ant Colonel Makarov, was so ill-prepared that he succeeded only in striking the assassin with his umbrella.
several further assassinations
was formally condemned
The
assassin escaped. After
and attempts on the
to death
life
of the Tsar,
who
by the People's Will, an investigation
into the functioning of the Third Section revealed so
many
lapses in
security that the Tsar "could not consider himself safe in his
own
residence." 6
In August 1880 the discredited Third Section was abolished and replaced by a new Department of State Police (renamed in 1883 simply the Department of Police), responsible for all aspects of state
crime was made the responsibility of a Special Department (Osobyi Otdel) within Police Headquarters and of a regional network of Security Sections (Okhrannoye Otdelenie), the first of which
security. Political
were
set
up
collectively
to save
in 1881.
known
Alexander
political police system became Okhrana. The reorganization failed, however, who was assassinated in 1881 with a crudely
Henceforth the
as the II,
constructed hand grenade.
The Okhrana was unique
in the Europe of its time in both the powers and the scope of its activities. Other European police forces operated under the law. The Okhrana, however, was a law unto itself. In matters of political crime it had the right to search, to
extent of
its
Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)
imprison, and to exile on
its
own
21
The
authority.
basic difference be-
liberal convert from was "the omnipotence of the political police" on which Tsarism depended for its survival. Tsarist Russia, however, never became a full-fledged police state. By subsequent Soviet standards, the enormous powers of the Okhrana were used on only a
tween Russia and the
rest of
Marxism, Peter Struve,
modest
scale.
Europe, wrote the
in 1903,
Even during the repression of the 1880s, only seventeen
people were executed for political crimes sassinations.
Among
the terrorists
—
actual or attempted as-
all
who went
to the scaffold
ander Ulyanov, condemned to death for his part to kill
der
Alexander
III
on March
II's assassination.
(better
known by
1,
his later alias,
By
1887, the sixth anniversary of Alexan-
Lenin)
is
said to have
sworn vengeance
1901, 4,113 Russians were in internal
exile for political crimes, 180 of far the
was Alex-
an unsuccessful plot
Ulyanov's seventeen-year-old brother Vladimir
against the Tsarist regime.
By
in
them
at
most persecuted group
hard labor. in the
7
Russian Empire was
the Jews. Popular anti-Semitism, state-encouraged pogroms, disabling
and multiple forms of discrimination during the reigns of Alexan-
laws,
der III (1881-94) and Nicholas
II
(1894-1917) led to the exodus of
The regime, downward, found the Jews from the Tsar a convenient scapegoat on whom to focus popular discontents. The sudden expulsion of almost several million Russian Jews, mainly to the United States.
thirty
thousand Jews from
Moscow
at
Passover 1891
set a
precedent
for Stalin's
much
Though
Okhrana did not originate state-sponsored anti-Semitism, it. The Okhrana official Komissarov received an
it
the
larger-scale deportation of other ethnic minorities.
helped to implement
official
reward of 10,000 rubles for inciting
anti- Jewish riots
pamphlets printed on Police Department presses. 8 The
last
with
head of the
Okhrana, A. T. Vasilyev, self-righteously condemned as "base slander" "excited newspaper articles" in the West that accused the Tsarist gov-
ernment and the Okhrana of conniving at the pogroms. He explained in his memoirs that the "core of the evil" was the "unfortunate inaptitude of the Jews for healthy productive work":
The government would never have had
the slightest reason
to adopt measures directed against the
Jews had not these
been rendered imperative by the necessity for protecting the Russian population, and especially the peasants.
was a
certain kind of oppression of the
unfortunately, this
was
far
Jews
from being as
.
.
.
There
in Russia, but,
effective as
it
ought
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
22
to have been.
The Government did seek
to protect the peas-
ants from the ruthless exploitation of the Jews; but
bore only too
little fruit.
State-sponsored anti-Semitism helps to explain
more
rapidly
among
The
action
why Marxism
spread
other ethnic group in
Marxist party with a mass following
first
was the Jewish Bund, founded
among
among any
the Jews than
the Russian Empire.
its
9
1897. Jews were prominent also
in
the founders of both the Russian Social Democratic Workers'
Party, the
main Marxist grouping,
in 1898,
and the
Socialist
Revolu-
The growing fueled the Okh-
tionary Party, the successor of the Populists, in 1902.
Jewish presence in the revolutionary leadership further 10
rana's anti-Semitism.
Despite the Jewish origins of
many "Old
Bolsheviks," anti-
Semitism was to reemerge, usually in disguise, under
Okhrana, the
KGB has promoted no pogroms.
But
anti-Semitic section of the Soviet establishment.
klatura as a whole
it
Stalin.
Unlike the
remains the most
Though
the nomen-
almost closed to Jews, the Foreign Ministry and
is
Central Committee are normally prepared to consider candidates of half- Jewish descent.
of some
KGB
KGB
The
officers
is
not.
Behind the recurrent obsession
with Zionist conspiracies and "ideological sub-
version" lurk remnants of the anti-Semitic myths propagated by the
Okhrana. In January 1985, L.
P.
Zamoysky, deputy head of the
Directorate of Intelligence Information, a
man
FCD
with a reputation for
both intelligence and good judgment, solemnly assured the London
KGB residency, in Gordievsky's presence, that the Freemasons, whose rites,
he was convinced, were of Jewish origin, were part of the great
Zionist conspiracy. 11
KGB training manuals and lecture courses are understandably reluctant to acknowledge any continuities between the
KGB
in their
Okhrana and
treatment of political criminals or Jewish dissidents.
Rather greater recognition is given to the Okhrana's foreign intelligence work. 12 The main priority of the Okhrana abroad was the surveillance of Russian emigres, nowadays conducted by line officers in
dents,
among
each
KGB
residency.
which had begun with Herzen's
exile in 1847,
the Populist generation of the 1870s.
II there
were almost
KR (Counterintelligence)
The emigration of
By
political dissi-
gathered pace
the reign of Nicholas
thousand revolutionary emigres preparing for the overthrow of Tsarism by methods ranging from making bombs to five
research in the Reading
Room
of the British
Museum.
13
23
Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)
Agency (Zagranichnaya Agentura), set up for the surveillance of the emigres, was 14 located in the Russian embassy in Paris, the main emigre center. According to French Surete records, the Foreign Agency began work 15 By 1884 it was fully in Paris, probably on a small scale, in 1882.
The headquarters of
the Okhrana's Foreign
operational, under the direction of the formidable Pyotr Rachkovsky.
During the Populist era Rachkovsky had been a minor
civil
servant
with revolutionary sympathies. In 1879 he was arrested by the Third Section and given the option of exile in Siberia or a career in the political police.
most
Rachkovsky chose the
latter
and went on to become the
influential foreign intelligence officer in the history of Tsarist
Russia. Unlike later
KGB
residents in Paris, he
figure in Parisian high society,
was
also a prominent
accumulating a fortune by speculation
on the Bourse, entertaining lavishly
in his villa at St.
Cloud, and num-
bering directors of the Surete, ministers, and presidents intimates.
A writer in the newspaper Echo de Paris
If ever
you
you meet him
in society,
I
very
will feel the slightest misgivings
in his
appearance reveals his
always with a smile on his genial, jolly fellow
his
much doubt whether
about him, for nothing
sinister function. Fat, restless,
lips ...
on a spree. ...
he looks more
He
like
some
has one rather notice-
—that he passionately fond of our Pari—but he the most operator be found
able weakness
siennes
among
said of him in 1901:
little
is
is
skillful
to
in
the ten capitals of Europe. 16
Rachkovsky and his successors as heads of the Foreign Agency enjoyed much the same status as the heads or deputy heads of the Okhrana in St.
Petersburg, as well as considerable freedom of action. Like the
Okhrana within Russia, the Foreign Agency employed both "external" surveillance (by plainclothes detectives, concierges, and others) and "internal" penetration (by police spies, some of whom had begun as genuine revolutionaries) against Russian emigres. 17 So, far from objecting to Foreign Agency operations on French soil, the Surete welcomed them as a means of extending its own intelligence gathering. A Surete report concluded on the eve of the First World War: It is
impossible, on any objective assessment, to deny the
usefulness of having a Russian police operating in Paris,
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
24
whether
officially
or not, whose purpose
surveillance the activities
is
to keep under
of Russian revolutionaries.
In order to maintain the good will of the French authorities, the For-
Agency made a habit of exaggerating the revolutionary menace. The Surete put the number of Russian revolutionaries in the Paris area eign
alone in 1914 at over forty thousand
—almost ten times the
real total
whole of Western Europe. 18
for the
The
willingness of other
European police forces to cooperate
with the Foreign Agency was increased by a spate of anarchist assassinations.
Among the assassins'
leading victims were President Carnot of
Antonio Canovas del
Castillo, the Spanish prime minisEmpress Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary in 1898; King Umberto of Italy in 1900; President McKinley of the United States in 1901; and a succession of prominent Russians: N. P. Bogolepov, the minister of education in 1901; D. S. Sipyagin, minister of the interior
France ter, in
in 1894;
1897; the
(and thus responsible for the Okhrana), in 1902; Sipyagin's successor, V. K. Plehve, in 1904; general of
Moscow
Grand Duke
in 1906;
minister of the interior, in 191 security agencies in
Rome
and 1.
P.
Sergei Aleksandrovich, governor-
A. Stolypin, prime minister and
In 1898 an international conference of
approved a resolution that "The Central
Authorities responsible in each country for the surveillance of anarchists establish direct contact with
one another and exchange
all rele-
vant information." 19
From
Paris the Foreign
Agency ran small groups of agents who
kept watch on Russian emigres in Britain, Germany, and
1912
—
Italy.
—from
In Switzerland, an increasingly important center of the
revolutionary diaspora,
it
had three Geneva policemen on its payroll to files and provide a check on
obtain information directly from police
by the Swiss authorities. Surveillance of emigres in Belgium and Scandinavia was carried out by a mixture of the local police and Foreign Agency agents sent from Paris on special assignments. 20 During the few years before the First World War, however, the
intelligence sent
Foreign Agency was assailed by protests from
socialist and radical on French soil. In 1913 the Russian embassy thought it prudent to announce that the agency had been discontinued. Its work was officially taken over by a private detective agency, the Agence Bint et Sambain, headed by Henri Bint, a former French employee of the Agency. In reality, the agency continued to operate, though with greater discretion than in the
deputies for
its activities
25
Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)
past.
But
abolition
its official, if fictional,
with the Surete, which complained in
ment
will
no longer be able
dangerous foreign refugees
The Foreign Agency tion. It also
to
in
know
damaged
its
close cooperation
1914 that "the French governas precisely as in the past
did not limit
itself to intelligence collec-
pioneered a wide variety of what the
KGB
later called
"active measures," designed to influence foreign governments lic
what
France are doing." 21
and pub-
opinion, and "special actions" involving various forms of violence.
up the People's Will printing shop like the work of disaffected revolutionaries. In 1890 Rachkovsky "unmasked" a bombmaking conspiracy by Russian emigres in Paris. At a sensational trial some of the plotters were sentenced to imprisonment (one named Landezen, who had fled abroad, in absentia) and others exiled. The Okhrana then arrested sixty-three revolutionaries in Russia who were In 1886 Rachkovsky's agents blew
in
Geneva, successfully making the explosion look
alleged to have links with the Paris
had been
inspired,
bomb
makers. In reality the plot
on Rachkovsky's instructions, by Landezen,
who
was an agent provocateur of the Foreign Agency and provided the money for the bomb factory from agency funds. 22 During his eighteen years in Paris (1884-1902) Rachkovsky managed to cover the tracks of his involvement in this and other cases of alleged emigre bomb factories and bombings. Raytayev, his successor as head of the Foreign Agency (1903-1905), was less fortunate. He was recalled to Russia after the Surete had discovered his involvement in an unsuccessful bomb attack in Paris against Prince Trubetskoi and the bombing of a French protest meeting against Tsarist repression of the 1905 revolution, during which two gardes republicans were wounded.
named Vladimir Burtsev at last 1 890 bomb-making conspiracy. He
In 1909, a revolutionary journalist revealed Rachkovsky's role in the
who had escaped in was none other than the current Foreign Agency chief in Paris, Harting. The Surete concluded that Harting's "precipitate flight and
also alleged that the agent provocateur Landezen,
1890,
disappearance" tended to prove the truth of Burtsev's revelations. Curi-
seemed little concerned about such episodes. The " by the agency was, in its view, "des plus precieux, and clearly outweighed the crimes of its agents provocateurs. 23 Rachkovsky specialized in forgery as well as the use of agents provocateurs. There is a strong probability that he was responsible for
ously, the Surete
intelligence provided
the fabrication of the famous anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion, which purported to describe a Jewish plot for world
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
26
domination. The Protocols had limited influence before the First World
War. For a time Nicholas
II
believed they provided the key to an
understanding of the 1905 revolution but was then persuaded that they
were a forgery and complained that they "polluted the pure cause of anti-Semitism." Between the wars, however, the Protocols reemerged as one of the central
texts in
Nazi and
fascist anti-Semitism,
becoming
perhaps the most influential forgery of the twentieth century. 24
Rachkovsky's role was not limited to intelligence collection and "active measures."
He
Rachkovsky arrived
also sought to influence Russian foreign policy.
in Paris in
1884 as a committed advocate of an
alliance with France, diplomatically isolated since her defeat in the
Franco-Prussian
War
of 1870-71.
He was
regularly used as secret
intermediary in negotiations both for the Franco-Russian Dual Alli-
ance
in
1891-94 and for
its
closest contacts in Paris
modification in 1899.
Among Rachkovsky's
was Theophile Delcasse, who became from
1898 to 1905 the longest-serving foreign minister in the seventy-year history of the French Third Republic. In arranging his
own
visit to St.
Petersburg to modify the terms of the Dual Alliance in 1899, the Tsar's state visit to
France
in 1901,
and President Loubet's return
visit to
Russia in 1902, Delcasse bypassed the French ambassador, the Marquis
de Montebello, and worked instead through Rachkovsky. The Russian
Count Muraviev, informed the unfortunate Monfullest confidence in Monsieur Rachkovsky and he appears to have gained that of the French government." Rachkovsky eventually overreached himself and was recalled from Paris in 1902. What led to his downfall, however, was not his increasing intrusion into
foreign minister, tebello,
"We
have the
Franco-Russian diplomacy but the outrage of the Tsarina tious revelation that a
at his incau-
French "doctor" employed by her was an un-
qualified charlatan. 25
The most important contribution by of Tsarist foreign policy was sigint
—the
its
the
Okhrana to the making
pioneering role in the development of
signals intelligence derived
from intercepting and where
possible decrypting other governments' communications. Like
most major powers of the ancien regime, eighteenth-century Russia had possessed cabinets
noirs,
or "black chambers," which secretly inter-
cepted both private and diplomatic correspondence. In Western Europe the development of the cabinets noirs was disrupted in varying degrees during the nineteenth century by public and parliamentary protests at interference with the mail service. In Britain, for example, the Decy-
phering Branch was abolished in 1844 after a
Commons row
over the
27
Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)
opening of the correspondence of the exiled Italian nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini. British sigint did not resume until the First World War. 26 In
was undisturbed The Okhrana had black chambers working for it in the post offices of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw, Odessa, Kiev, Kharkov, Riga, Vilna, Tomsk, and Tiflis. The last head of the Okhrana, A. T. Vasilyev, virtuously insisted that their work was directed only against subversives and criminals: "The right-minded citiautocratic Russia, however, the development of sigint
by parliamentary
protests.
zen certainly never had any reason to fear the censorship, for private business was, on principle, completely ignored."
27
In reality, as under
the ancien regime, letter opening was a source of gossip as well as of
The coded correspondence of the Archbishop of Irkutsk when decrypted, that he was having an affair with an
intelligence.
disclosed,
abbess.
28
The Okhrana's
chief cryptanalyst, Ivan Zybin,
breaker of genius. According to the Okhrana chief Zavarzin,
"He was
in
was a code
Moscow,
ciphers he cleared up at a glance, but complicated ciphers placed in a state
P.
a fanatic, not to say a maniac, for his work. Simple
him
almost of trance from which he did not emerge until the
problem was resolved." The original priority of the Okhrana's cryptanalysts
was the coded correspondence of revolutionaries inside and outOkhrana extended its operations to include the
side Russia, but the
diplomatic telegrams sent and received by
St.
Petersburg embassies.
Intercepted diplomatic dispatches had been an irregular source of foreign intelligence ever since the 1740s. In 1800 the foreign minister N. P.
Panin wrote to his ambassador
in Berlin:
We possess the ciphers of the correspondence of the King [of Prussia] with his charge d'affaires here: should
Haugwitz
[the Prussian foreign minister] of
you suspect
bad
faith,
it is
only necessary to find some pretext to get him to write here
on the subject despatch
is
in question.
deciphered,
I
As soon
as his or his King's
will not fail to apprise
you of
its
content. 29
During the early nineteenth century, the increasing use of couriers
number The growing use of the
rather than the mails for diplomatic traffic steadily reduced the
of dispatches intercepted by cabinets
noirs.
electric telegraph in the latter part of the century,
simplified both the transmission
however, greatly
and interception of diplomatic commu-
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
28
nications. In France, diplomatic traffic at the
decrypted in cabinets noirs at
end of the century was
both the foreign ministry and the Surete. 30
was shared between the Under Aleksandr Savinsky, head of the foreign ministry's cabinet noir from 1901 to 1910, 31 The Okhrana, its status was enhanced and its organization improved. however, probably remained the dominant partner in the cryptanalytic Similarly, in Russia diplomatic cryptanalysis
Okhrana and
a cabinet noir in the foreign ministry.
cooperation with the foreign ministry.
The breaking of high-grade code and cipher systems depends not simply on the
skill
usually
of code breakers but also on assistance
from espionage. The Okhrana became the
first
modern
intelligence
make one of its major priorities the theft of embassy codes and ciphers as well as plain-text versions of diplomatic telegrams, which could be compared with the coded originals. In so doing it set an important precedent for the KGB. As British ambassador in St. service to
Petersburg from 1904 to 1906, Sir Charles Hardinge discovered that the
head Chancery servant had been offered the then enormous sum of £1,000 to
steal a
copy of one of the diplomatic ciphers. 32 In June 1904
what he termed "a disagreeable shock." A prominent Russian politician had said he "did not mind how much I reported in writing what he told me in conversation, but he begged me on no account to telegraph as all our telegrams are known!" 33 Hardinge discovered three months later that Rachkovsky had set up a secret department in the ministry of the interior (which was responsible Hardinge reported
to the Foreign Office
for the Okhrana), "with a view to obtaining access to the archives of
the foreign missions in Efforts to
St.
Petersburg." 34
improve the British embassy's rather primitive secu-
were unavailing. Cecil Spring Rice, the embassy secretary, reported February 1906: "For some time past papers have been abstracted
rity
in
Embassy The porter and other persons in connection with the Embassy are in the pay of the Police department and are also paid on delivery of papers." Spring Rice claimed to have "established" that from
this
the operation against the British embassy
Okhrana in
official
who had
was run by Komissarov, the award for his successes
recently received an
promoting anti-Semitic propaganda.
On
Komissarov's instructions,
"Emissaries of the police are constantly waiting in the evening outside the
Embassy
in order to take charge of the papers procured." Despite
new embassy safe, the fitting of padlocks to the filing and instructions to diplomatic staff not to let the Chancery
the installation of a cabinets,
keys out of their possession, the theft of papers continued.
Two months
29
Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)
later
Spring Rice obtained proof "that access has been obtained to the
archives of the Embassy, which have been taken off to the house of the
Agent Komissarov, where they have been photographed." The probawas a bribed embassy servant who had taken wax impressions of the padlocks to the filing cabinets, and had then been provided with duplicate keys by the Okhrana. The American, Swedish, and ble culprit
Belgian embassies
By
all
reported similar experiences. 35
the turn of the century,
if
not before, the diplomatic
intelli-
gence derived from sigint and stolen embassy documents was having an
important (though
still
almost unresearched) influence on Tsarist for-
From 1898 to persuade Germany to sign a
eign policy. 36
in the
1901 Russia secret
made
repeated attempts to
agreement on spheres of influence
Turkish Empire that would recognize her age-old ambitions
in
The attempts were abandoned at the end of 1901 because, as the Russian foreign minister Count Lamsdorf informed his ambassador in Berlin, decrypted German telegrams showed that the German the Bosporus.
government had no
real intention of signing
an agreement. 37
Throughout the reign of Nicholas II, Russia remained the in diplomatic sigint. Britain, Germany, the United States, and most minor powers had no sigint agencies at all until the First World War. Austrian sigint seems to have been limited to military world leader
communications. 38 Tsarist Russia's only serious competitor matic sigint was her
ally,
in diplo-
France. During the twenty years before the
World War the cabinets noirs at the Quai d'Orsay and the Surete had some success in breaking the diplomatic codes and ciphers of most major powers. But whereas Russia broke some French diplomatic codes and ciphers, France was unable to decrypt any Russian diplomatic First
traffic at all
(though she did have some success with Foreign Agency
codes and ciphers). In the
summer
of 1905, during the closing stages
neously, the Russo-Japanese
War and
the
of,
Franco-German
simulta-
crisis
over
Morocco, there was a brief period of sigint cooperation between Russia and her French ally. In June 1905 the Russian ambassador, on the orders of his government, handed the French prime minister, Maurice Rouvier, a copy of a decrypted German telegram dealing with the
Moroccan
crisis.
Rouvier considered the telegram so important that he
ordered the Surete to pass on to the Foreign Agency diplomatic
traffic its
sent to St. Petersburg by the acting lov, transmitting the
all
cabinet noir was able to decrypt.
the Japanese
The telegrams
head of the Foreign Agency, Manui-
Japanese decrypts, were themselves decrypted by
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
30
the cabinet noir at the Quai d'Orsay.
Unaware
that the decrypts
had
been given to the Russians on the orders of the prime minister, the Quai d'Orsay concluded instead that there had been a serious breach of sigint
and ordered
security
those at the Surete.
its
As
own
cryptanalysts to break off
all
contact with
a result of the farcical misunderstanding gener-
ated in Paris by the brief period of Franco-Russian sigint cooperation, the cabinets noirs at the Quai d'Orsay and the Surete continued inde-
pendently for the next six years to decrypt substantial amounts of diplomatic
traffic
—sometimes
the
same diplomatic
traffic
—without
ever communicating the results to each other. There seems to have been
no further exchange of
The
sigint
between Russia and France. 39
intermittent confusion in France's handling of sigint
had
one major adverse consequence for Russian cryptanalysts. Russia con-
World War to decrypt significant, but amounts of the diplomatic traffic of all but one of the major powers. The exception, from 1912, was Germany. 40 The changes in German diplomatic code and cipher systems that seem to have defeated Russian cryptanalysts during the two years before the outbreak of war in 1914 stemmed directly from French indiscretions during the Franco-German Agadir crisis of 191 1. In the course of that crisis the French foreign minister, Justin de Selves, discovered from tinued until the eve of the First
still
unquantifiable,
German ter,
telegrams decrypted by his cabinet noir that the prime minis-
Joseph Caillaux, had negotiated with the Germans behind his back.
The decrypts were used by de
Selves
and some of
his officials to start
a whispering campaign accusing Caillaux of treachery. Angered by the
campaign against him, Caillaux took the extraordinary step of calling on the German charge d'affaires and asking to see the original text of telegrams that referred to him in order to compare them with the decrypted versions. "I was wrong," he later admitted to the president of the Republic, "but I had to defend myself." The Germans, not surprisingly, introduced new diplomatic ciphers, which defeated the French as well as their Russian allies. 41 In Russia, as in France, foreign intelligence collection and analysis suffered
from interdepartmental
the responsibility of the
first
rivalry. Military intelligence
section of the General Staff
was
Though
German army before 1914 was mediocre, that about Russia's other main opponent, Austria, was excellent. 42 Military intelligence's main source, Colonel Alfred Redl, a senior Austrian intelintelligence about the
was probably the most important agent anywhere in Europe during the generation before the First World War. During the ligence officer,
Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)
31
winter of 1901-1902, Colonel Batyushin, head of Russian military
Warsaw, discovered that, unknown either to his superiors or to his friends, Redl was a promiscuous homosexual. By a mixture of blackmail and bribery of the kind sometimes later employed by the KGB, he recruited Redl as a penetration agent. With the money given intelligence in
him by the Russians, Redl was
able to purchase cars not merely for
himself but for one of his favorite lovers as well, a young Uhlan to
whom
he also paid 600 crowns a month.
officer,
the voluminous
decade before his exposure and
intelligence he provided during the
suicide in
Among
1913 were the Austrian mobilization plans against both
Russia and Serbia. 43 Tsarist diplomats
and consuls also dabbled in intelligence, occaBut military and diplo-
sionally collecting material of military value.
matic intelligence were poorly coordinated, reflecting the general lack of communication between the ministries of
Despite the army's interest in humint grasp the importance of
sigint.
The
(human
first
great
war and foreign intelligence),
German
Eastern Front, at Tannenberg in August 1914,
Russian forces' remarkable foolishness ciphered, in clear text. to
enemy
officer,
German
in
failed to
victory on the
owed much
to the
sending radio messages unen-
radio operators initially began listening
signals simply out of curiosity, but the
Colonel
it
affairs.
Max Hoffmann, who became
German
operations
the architect of victory,
quickly grasped their importance. Tannenberg became the
first
military
made possible by sigint. Thanks to sigint, wrote Hoffmann later, "We knew all the Russian plans." Almost as in a war game, the Russians found themselves surrounded by an enemy who had followed their victory
every movement. 44
Okhrana had no monopoly on foreign intelligence had no monopoly either on "active measures." Russia's
Just as the collection, so
it
most numerous agents of influence were foreign journalists who were bribed by the ministry of finance to support the massive foreign loans required by the Tsarist regime and the Russian economy, and to calm the anxieties of foreign investors about the safety of their investments.
In much of pre- 19 14 Europe it was regarded as perfectly normal for governments to "subsidize" friendly foreign newspapers. A French
parliamentary report in 1913, though critical of some aspects of intelli-
gence work, described the need for such subsidies as "incontestable." 45
Russian "subsidies" were the largest in Europe. Since France was by far the biggest foreign investor in prewar Russia, the chief target of the ministry of finance
was the French
press.
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
32
Artur Raffalovich, the ministry's representative
in Paris, bribed every
French newspaper of note with the single exception of the
Socialist
(later Communist) UHumanite. By March 1905 the confidence of French investors had been so shaken by both the abortive Russian revolution and Russian reverses in the war against Japan that with the support of Delcasse, the French foreign minister, Raffalovich was dis-
tributing bribes to the tune of 200,000 francs a month.
case of agents of influence,
it is
difficult to assess
press support purchased in this way. In
for a further loan.
By
March 1905 even
French banks from breaking
largess failed to prevent
As
usual in the
the importance of the Raffalovich's
off negotiations
1914, however, 25 percent of France's foreign
investment was in Russia (four-fifths of
compared with only 9 percent
in the vast
it
in
government loans)
—as
French Empire. Without press
support, the kind of crisis of confidence that prevented the conclusion
March 1905 would surely have been more frequent. 46 Though Tsarist Russia's foreign intelligence system was diffuse
of a loan in
and poorly coordinated, for the Soviet period. It
it
established a series of important precedents
engaged
in a
wide variety of "active measures"
as well as in intelligence collection. It led the
use of espionage to assist the prototype of the
"moles")
who
its
code breakers.
world
And
in sigint
in Alfred
and
Redl
in the it
had
more numerous foreign penetration agents (or were to become the chief asset of Soviet
in the 1930s
foreign intelligence. There was, however, another Tsarist precedent that did even
more than Redl
to persuade Soviet intelligence services
of the potential of penetration agents as a weapon against their opponents.
The Bolsheviks discovered from Okhrana files
Revolution that almost from the cratic
Labor Party
split into
moment
after the
February
the Russian Social
Demo-
Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in 1903 they
had been more successfully penetrated than perhaps any other revolutionary group. 47 Okhrana knowledge of Bolshevik organization and activities was so detailed and thorough that, despite the destruction of some of its records in the aftermath of the February Revolution, what survived has since become one of the major documentary sources for early Bolshevik history.
Some Okhrana files must ment
to Stalin,
who, once
in
later
have been a source of embarrass-
power, posed as the most loyal of Lenin's
followers. In reality, as late as 1909, he criticized Lenin for a
number
of theoretical "blunders" and for an "incorrect organizational policy."
A
letter intercepted
reveals the
by the Foreign Agency
moment when
in Paris in
Stalin finally decided to
December 1910
throw
in his lot
with
33
Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)
Lenin. Lenin's
line,
he wrote, was "the only correct one," and he
described Lenin himself as a "shrewd fellow" (umnyi muzhik).™ It is unlikely that Stalin was ever, as has been suggested, an Okhrana agent, though the Okhrana may well have tried to recruit him. The Okhrana had, however, no shortage of other agents in the Bolshevik Party. Of the five members of the Bolshevik Party's St. Petersburg Committee in 1908-1909, no fewer than four were Okhrana
agents.
49
degrees.
Other anti-Tsarist groups were also penetrated to varying
Among
those in the Social Revolutionary Party in the pay of
Okhrana was the head of its "Fighting Section" from 1904 to 1909, Yevno Azev, who was responsible for organizing assassinations and terrorist attacks. Among his victims was the minister of the interior Vyacheslav von Plehve, blown to pieces by a Fighting Section bomb. Azev, however, was a confused figure who scarcely knew in the end "whether he was a terrorist spying upon the government or a police agent spying upon the terror." 50 The most successful mole recruited by the Okhrana in 1910, from the Tsarist viewpoint, was a Moscow worker named Roman Malinovsky, who in 1912 was elected as one of the six Bolshevik deputies in the Duma, the Tsarist parliament. "For the first time," wrote Lenin enthusiastically, "we have an outstanding leader [Malinovsky] from among the workers representing us
in the
Duma."
In a party
dedicated to proletarian revolution but as yet without proletarian lead-
whom
ers,
Lenin saw Malinovsky,
tral
Committee, as a portent of great importance:
to build a workers' party with
he brought onto the Bolshevik Cen"It
really possible
is
such people, though the
difficulties will
be incredibly great!" The Bolshevik and Menshevik deputies elected in
1912 sat for a year as members of a single Social Democratic group in the
Duma. But when
man
the group split in 1913 Malinovsky
became
chair-
of the Bolshevik fraction. 51
By 1912 Lenin was
Okhrana Committee set one of whose members
so concerned by the problem of
penetration that, on his initiative, the Bolshevik Central
—
up a three-man "provocation commission" was Malinovsky. After the arrest of Stalin and his fellow member of the Central Committee, Yakov Sverdlov, in February 1913, as the result of information supplied by Malinovsky, Lenin discussed with Malinovsky
what could be done
to forestall further arrests. In July 1913
Lenin again
Okhrana penetration with Malinovsky and two of his chief lieutenants, Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev. Only Malinovsky saw the irony of their conclusion that there must be an discussed the problem of
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
34
Okhrana agent near to the six Bolshevik deputies whose chairman he was. He was instructed to be "as conspiratorial as possible" in order to
minimize the dangers of police penetration.
tor of the Police Department, described
S. P.
Beletsky, the direc-
Malinovsky as "the pride of the
Okhrana." But the
Even Lenin, drinking. In
strain of his double life eventually
May
proved too much.
became concerned about
his strongest supporter,
heavy
his
1914 the new deputy minister of the interior, V. F.
Dzhunkovsky, possibly fearing the scandal that would
result if Mali-
novsky's increasingly erratic behavior led to the revelation that the
Okhrana employed him
as an agent in the
him. Malinovsky resigned from the
Duma, decided
Duma and fled from
to get rid of
St.
Petersburg
with a 6,000-ruble payoff, which the Okhrana urged him to use to start a
new
abroad.
life
Rumors
agent. Yuli Martov, the
rapidly spread that he
Menshevik
certain without the slightest doubt that he
whether we
will
be able to prove
it is
had been an Okhrana in June "We are all
wrote
leader,
is
a provocateur
.
.
but
.
another matter." Though accept-
ing that Malinovsky had committed "political suicide," Lenin dis-
missed the charges against him.
When Malinovsky
reemerged
in a
German
prisoner-of-war
camp, spreading Bolshevik propaganda among his fellow POWs, Lenin resumed correspondence with him and continued to defend him against
worked
the charge of having
for the
Okhrana. That charge, Lenin
repeated in January 1917, was "absolute nonsense."
When
proof began
emerge from Okhrana files opened after the February Revolution, Lenin at first refused to believe it. Malinovsky's career came to a
to
tragically bizarre
end eighteen months
later.
turned to Russia, insisting that "he could not
In October 1918 he relive outside the revolu-
tion" and apparently hoping to rehabilitate himself.
He was
tried
by a
revolutionary tribunal and shot in the gardens of the Kremlin on
No-
vember
6,
1918.
Malinovsky's
ability to deceive
do with Lenin's sense of revolutionaries, at his
preme
guilt,
own
Lenin for so long had
like that
much
to
of some other upper-class
privileged upbringing. Malinovsky's su-
merit, in Lenin's eyes,
was
his lower-class origin.
He was
the
prototype of the working-class organizers and orators who were in disappointingly short supply in Bolshevik ranks. Malinovsky's criminal record and sometimes violent habits only emphasized, in Lenin's view, his authentic working-class credentials. Lenin's initial attraction to Stalin, of
which he was
also later to repent,
had a similar
origin. Stalin's
35
Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)
humble
origins
and rough manner,
free
from
trace of bourgeois
all
refinement, once again triggered Lenin's feelings of guilt at his
own
class origins.
The penetration of the Bolshevik Party had,
paradoxically, ad-
vantages as well as disadvantages for Lenin. Beletsky, the prewar police
prewar policy
director, later admitted that "the
whole purpose" of
had been to prevent, at
the unification of Russian socialism.
"I worked," he said,
most
likely to
all costs,
his
man many
"on the principle of divide and rule." The
keep Russian Socialists divided was Lenin. Though
Bolsheviks hoped for reunion with the Mensheviks, Lenin stood out resolutely against
it.
Beletsky actually smoothed Lenin's path on a
number of occasions by conveniently
arresting both his
more
difficult
Menshevik opponents and those Bolsheviks most anxious for the reunification of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. But whereas the Okhrana was convinced that a disunited party would necessarily mean a weaker socialist movement, Lenin believed that, on the contrary, the existence of a separate Bolshevik Party was the key to victory. Only a disciplined, doctrinally pure, "monolithic" elite of hardened revolutionaries could lead the Russian people to the promised land. Though the promised land was never reached, the chaotic conditions that followed the overthrow of Tsarism in February 1917 proved Lenin's strategy of revolution right. In the aftermath of the February Revolution the Bolsheviks were fewer in
number than
main rivals, the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries. But it was the Bolsheviks who took power in October. The remarkable tactical victory of the Okhrana in penetrating the Bolsheviks thus ended in 1917 in strategic defeat and its own extinction. The February Revolution (March 8-12, 1917, by today's calendar) took most revolutionaries by surprise. Only six weeks earlier the forty-six-year-old Lenin, in exile in Switzerland, had predicted: "We the old will probably not live to see the decisive battles of the coming revolution." The Okhrana probably had a more accurate sense of the mood in Petrograd (as St. Petersburg was renamed on the outbreak of either of their
war) than any of the revolutionary groups.
One
of
its
agents predicted
on the eve of revolution: "The underground revolutionary parties are preparing a revolution, but a revolution,
if it
takes place, will be spon-
taneous, quite likely a hunger riot." Those closest to revolution, he reported, were the mothers of large families, "exhausted endlessly at the their sick
tail
of queues, and having suffered so
from standing in watching
much
and half-starved children": "they are stockpiles of inflamma-
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
36
ble material, needing only a spark to set
them
Revolution was sparked by demonstrations
bread on March
The
8.
By
afire."
52
Sure enough, the
among women queuing
for
the 10th the whole of Petrograd was on strike.
decisive factor at this point
was the
attitude of the Petro-
grad garrison. In 1905 the Revolution had been broken by the army.
March 1917
army joined the Revolution. Once again, the Okhrana had detected the way the wind was blowing. A political rally by striking workers had been broken up by Cossacks on February 27, but, In
the
reported the Okhrana, "in general there was an impression that the
Cossacks were on the side of the workers." 53
On March
12 a section of
the Petrograd garrison mutinied and the success of the Revolution was assured. Three days later Tsar Nicholas II abdicated in favor of his
Grand Duke Mikhail. When Mikhail renounced the throne March 16, over four centuries of rule by the Romanov dynasty came to an end. Power passed to a Provisional Government mainly composed of liberal politicians, coexisting uneasily with a Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, which became the model, and in some sense the spokesman, for local Soviets all over brother the
the next day,
Russia.
With Tsarism tory" went
its
into
what Trotsky termed "the dustbin of
political police.
On March
Okhrana headquarters. According
12 the
crowd broke
his-
into
to the outraged director of police,
A.
T. Vasilyev:
All the archives of the Special Investigation Branch, with
records of finger-prints, photographs, and other data con-
cerning thieves, forgers, and murderers, were dragged into the courtyard
and there solemnly burned. Further, the
intruders also broke open
my
desk and appropriated 25,000
rubles of public money, which
Though illegal
down
I
had had
in
my
keeping.
Vasilyev virtuously protested that he "could not recall a single
action" for which he was responsible, he soon found himself in
the Peter and Paul fortress, complaining of having to sleep on "straw
mattresses and pillows stuffed with hens' feathers," eat "dreadful, evil-
smelling soup and an equally repulsive hash
made
of
all
sorts of un-
speakable offal," and of being allowed to have a bath only once a
bathroom with "drafts in every direction." 54 The imprisonment of the head of the Okhrana, like the reduction of the Tsar fortnight in a freezing
Tsarist Origins (1565-1917)
Nicholas
II,
Emperor of All Russia,
to the
37
rank of Citizen Romanov,
seemed to symbolize the birth of a new democratic order and the
final
victory over despotism. In the aftermath of revolution both the Provi-
Government and the Petrograd Soviet believed that Russia would never again have a political police.
sional
2 The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy" (1917-21)
The Cheka,
the ancestor of today's
KGB, was
founded on December
When the KGB was established in 1954 it adopted the Cheka emblems of the shield and the sword: the shield to defend the Revolution, the sword to smite its foes. By the time Gordievsky escaped in 1985, his KGB identity card carried only the emblem of a shield; the sword had been dropped in an attempt to soften the KGB's ruthless 20, 1917.
KGB officers, however, still style themselves Cheand receive their salaries on the twentieth of each month ("Che2 kists' Day") in honor of the Cheka's birthday. Like British income tax on its introduction in 1799, the Cheka was originally intended only as a temporary expedient. Lenin little dreamed that it would rapidly become both the largest political police force and the largest foreign intelligence service in the world. Before the reputation. Today's 1
kisty
Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 (November 7 by the Western calendar adopted afterward) Lenin had foreseen no need for either political police or foreign intelligence.
When
he returned to Petrograd
renamed Leningrad) two months after the February Revolution had overthrown Tsarism, he hailed the coming of world revolution. The (since
Bolsheviks confidently expected their national revolutionary
movement
own
that
38
revolution to spark an inter-
would overthrow world
capital-
The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy" ism. In the
new postrevolutionary world order
there
39
would be no place
Leon Trotsky declared Commissar for Foreign
for conventional diplomats, let alone for spies.
confidently on his appointment as People's
Affairs after the October Revolution: "I will issue a few revolutionary
proclamations to the peoples of the world and then shut up shop." ordered the publication of Tsarist Russia's secret treaties with then announced: "The abolition of secret diplomacy
is
He
its allies,
the primary
3 condition of an honorable, popular, really democratic foreign policy."
Lenin's prerevolutionary vision of
life
in Bolshevik
and Revolution, written there would be no place even
Russia was
summer
of
similarly Utopian. In State
in the
1917, he claimed that
for a police force,
He acknowledged that in
the transition from would be necessary to arrange for "the suppression of the minority of exploiters by the majority of wage slaves of yesterday." But such suppression would be "comparatively easy": still
less for a secret police.
capitalism to
communism
it
Naturally, the exploiters are unable to suppress the people
without a highly complex machine for performing this task, but the people can suppress the exploiters even with a very
simple "machine," almost without a "machine," without a special apparatus, by the simple organization
of the armed
people.
The
people, Lenin believed,
would mete out
class justice
on the
street
4
The October Revolution, however, ushered in a world very different from the Utopian vision of State and Revolution.
as the need arose.
Crucial to the legitimacy of the Soviet state that emerged from the
Revolution
is
the
Communist myth
tariat," the Bolsheviks led a
that, as "the
vanguard of the prole-
popular rising that expressed the will not
merely of themselves but of the Russian people as a whole. The reality of the October Revolution, which neither Lenin nor his successors
could ever admit even to themselves, was a coup d'etat by a revolutionary minority against the moribund provisional government that had
succeeded the Tsarist regime. By
first
opposing and then overthrowing
an increasingly unpopular government, the Bolsheviks
won
mass, but
not majority, support. In the postrevolutionary elections to the Constituent
Assembly, their main
tionaries (SRs), gained less
rivals
on the
left,
the Socialist Revolu-
an absolute majority while the Bolsheviks
won
than a quarter of the vote. Even with the support of the Left
Socialist Revolutionaries (LSRs), they
remained
in a minority.
When
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
40
met in January 1918, the Bolsheviks broke it up. The problem of opposition, both at home and abroad, to the new
the Assembly
Bolshevik government, the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnar-
kom), proved vastly greater than Lenin had anticipated.
all.
Convinced of
leaders tended
their
He
quickly
was necessary after monopoly of Marxist wisdom, the Bolshevik
concluded that "a special apparatus" to deal with
from the outset
it
to classify all opposition, whatever
social origin, as counterrevolution.
its
On December 4 the Military Revolu-
tionary Committee, which had carried out the October Revolution,
Commission
Combating Counterrevolution and SaboThe news on December 19 of an impending strike by all state employees persuaded Sovnarkom, under Lenin's chairmanship, that still more drastic action was needed. Dzerzhinsky was instructed "to establish a special commission to examine the possibility of combating such a strike by the most energetic revolutionary measures." The next day, December 20, Lenin wrote to Dzerzhinsky: "The bourgeoisie is intent on committing the most heinous of crimes." Addressing Sovnarkom the same evening, Dzerzhinsky declared: created the
for
tage under Feliks Dzerzhinsky.
Do
not think that
are not
now
seek forms of revolutionary justice;
need of justice.
in
a fight to the
I
finish. Life
war now
It is
or death!
I
—face to
propose,
I
we
face,
demand an
organ for the revolutionary settlement of accounts with counterrevolutionaries.
Sovnarkom approved the
creation under Dzerzhinsky's leadership of
the All-Russian Extraordinary revolution and Sabotage, better
Commission
known
Combating CounterCheka (one of several
for
as the
abbreviations of Vserossiiskaya Chrezvychainaya Komissiya po Borbe s
Kontrrevolyutsiei
i
Sabotazhem). 5
nowadays the object of a KGB-inspired him greater adulation than the combined total of that bestowed on all his successors (an embarrassingly high proportion of whom are now officially acknowledged as ." writes the Soviet major criminals). "Knight of the Revolution Feliks Dzerzhinsky
is
personality cult, which showers on
.
historian V. Andrianov, "There were
Even
many
.
people deserving this
title.
whenever these words are spoken, the mind turns primarily to Feliks Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky. His entire heroic life paved so,
.
.
.
the road to immortality." 6
Like a majority of the early Cheka leadership, Dzerzhinsky was
The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy" of non-Russian origin.
He was born
in
1
41
877 into a well-to-do family of
Polish landowners and intelligentsia, and believed in childhood that he 7
had a vocation as a Catholic priest. Instead he became a schoolboy convert to Marxism, and in 1895 joined the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party. A year later he abandoned his formal education in order "to be closer to the people" and "to learn from them." By his own later account, he quickly became "a successful agitator and got through to the completely untouched masses
—
wherever workers met together." Dzerzhinsky was words, "the ing
fiercest
member
enemy of nationalism." led
in half
Kingdom
of Poland
and cooperation with Russian Marx-
not for an independent Poland.
to Dzerzhinsky's personality.
became a found-
by Rosa Luxemburg, which campaigned
for proletarian internationalism ists,
own
also, in his
In 1900 he
of the Social Democratic Party of the
and Lithuania (SKDPiL),
and
at social evenings, in taverns
He
Compromise of any kind was
wrote in 1901: "I
measures, or to love in half measures,
I
am
am
alien
not able to hate
not able to give up
I have either to give up my whole soul or give up nothing." At no point during his career as a revolutionary in Tsarist Russia or Poland was Dzerzhinsky at liberty for longer than three years. He was arrested for the first time in 1897 after a young worker "seduced by ten rubles from the gendarmes" informed on him. When his prison career
half my soul.
ended twenty years
later
with his liberation from
Moscow
Central
Prison after the February Revolution, he had spent eleven years in exile,
or penal servitude, and escaped three times. 8
zhinsky joined forces with the Bolsheviks,
was elected
gate,
On
initially as
to the Bolshevik Central
his release
an
Committee
jail,
Dzer-
SDKPiL deleat the
summer
Party conference, and took a prominent part in the October Revolution.
9
During
his first year as head of the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky and slept in his office in the Lubyanka. His powers of endurance and Spartan lifestyle earned him the nickname Iron Feliks. 10 The "Old Chekist" Fyodor Timofeevich Fomin later eulogized Dzer-
worked,
ate,
zhinsky's determination to refuse any privilege denied to other Chekists:
An
him his dinner from the room used by all the Cheka workers. Sometimes he would try to bring Feliks Edmundovich something a bit tastier or a little bit better, and Feliks Edmundovich would squint his eyes inquisitively and ask, "You mean that old messenger would bring
common
dining
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
42
everyone has had this for dinner tonight?"
And
the old man,
hiding his
embarrassment, would rush to answer, "Everyone,
everyone,
Comrade Dzerzhinsky."
11
Like Lenin, Dzerzhinsky was an incorruptible workaholic, prepared to sacrifice
both himself and others for the cause of the Revolution.
"My
"comes from were used to
strength," he claimed in his final speech before his death,
never sparing myself." 12 After his death these qualities
construct a portrait of Dzerzhinsky resembling a feeble parody of the
hagiography of a medieval
man
of the
KGB
saint.
from 1982
According to Viktor Chebrikov, chair-
to 1988:
Edmundovich whole-heartedly sought to eliminate and crimes from the world and dreamed of the times when wars and national enmity would vanish forever from Feliks
injustice
our
His whole
life.
he expressed
life
in these
was
mankind with my love, dirt of modern life." St.
Feliks
in
keeping with the motto which
words: "I would like to embrace to
warm
would have been unlikely
comic eulogy,
it
and
to cleanse
it
all
of the
to appreciate Chebrikov's mildly
for his gifts did not include a sense of
humor. Since, by
the 1980s, "lofty humanists" such as Dzerzhinsky were supposed to
have a sense of humor, however, Chebrikov made a humorless attempt to defend
not,
him
loved
life
was some people thought him. He manifestations and in all its richness, knew how to
against the charge of being humorless. Dzerzhinsky
Chebrikov
insisted, "the ascetic that
in all its
joke and laugh, and loved music and nature." 13
The
his death in 1926. In a conference effigy
KGB began immediately after room in the KGB officers' club an
cult of St. Feliks within the
of Dzerzhinsky, incorporating death masks of his face and hands
and wearing
his uniform,
was placed
veneration similar to Lenin's
in a glass coffin as
embalmed remains
in the
an object of
Red Square
mausoleum. 14 Dzerzhinsky's reputation survived unscathed into the Stalinist era, though it became increasingly overshadowed by Stalin's for almost everything else. On the Cheka's twentieth anniversary in December 1937 Dzerzhinsky was
own alleged genius for intelligence as
eulogized as "the indefatigable Bolshevik, the steadfast knight of the
Revolution": "Under his leadership on
many
occasions the
Cheka
staved off deadly dangers which threatened the young Soviet repub-
The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy"
43
15
But as the Stalin period progressed, portraits of Dzerzhinsky became smaller and fewer. Shortly after the Second World War, the lie."
Dzerzhinsky
was thrown out of the
effigy
KGB
officers'
club and
apparently destroyed. 16
The
revival
and expansion of the Dzerzhinsky
cult during the
1960s was a product of de-Stalinization and the attempt by the to take refuge from the horrendous reality of atrocities of the Stalinist era
imagining, in which
its
by creating a mythical past of
St. Feliks,
KGB
involvement in the its
own
"knight of the Revolution," slew the
dragon of Counterrevolution. The most frequently repeated quotation in
KGB texts
is
Dzerzhinsky's insistence that Chekists require "a
heart, a cool head,
and clean hands." In the
late
KGB
of Dzerzhinsky was unveiled outside
warm
1950s a huge statue
headquarters in Dzer-
zhinsky Square. The main object of veneration within the First Chief (Foreign Intelligence) Directorate today
is
a large bust of Dzerzhinsky
on a marble pedestal constantly surrounded by fresh
FCD
officers in the
at
some
flowers. All
young
stage in their early careers have to lay
flowers or wreaths before their founder's bust then stand silent for a
moment
with head bowed
tomb of
the
unknown
much
soldier.
as
if
they were war veterans at the
By such
rituals today's
KGB
officers
succeed in strengthening their self-image as Chekisty and suppressing,
uneasy awareness of their far more direct links with
at least in part, the
NKVD.
Stalin's
The
17
original
20, 1917, for use
weapons approved by Sovnarkom on December
by Dzerzhinsky and the Cheka against the forces of
counterrevolution were "seizure of property, resettlement, deprivation of [ration] cards, publication of lists of enemies of the people, etc." 18
Cheka's main weapon, however, was to be
terror.
The As Lenin woke up
rapidly to the reality of opposition on a scale he had considered inconceivable before the Revolution, he concluded that "a special system of
organized violence" would be necessary to establish the dictatorship of
war the Bolsheviks could not afford to be outmoded notions of "bourgeois" legality or morality.
the proletariat. In the class
constrained by
The
greatest revolutionary rising of the nineteenth century, the Paris
Commune much
of
1
87 1 had been defeated, Lenin argued, because ,
it
placed
and too little in force. Its failure to suppress the bourgeoisie by force had led directly to its downfall. Lenin
too
faith in conciliation
spoke scathingly of "the prejudices of the intelligentsia against the death penalty." 19 The masses, he believed, had healthier instincts. As early as
December 1917 he encouraged them
to practice lynch law
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
44
("street justice") against "speculators,"
"class enemies."
and generally to
terrorize their
20
Like Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, though not personally a brutal man, class from which he had sprung. had trained himself to be "without pity" in defending the Revolution. One of his chief lieutenants, Martyn Ianovich Latsis, wrote in the Cheka periodical Krasny Terror (Red Terror):
burned with ideological hatred for the
He
told his wife that he
We
are not waging
war against
minating the bourgeoisie as a
individuals.
During
class.
We
are exter-
investigation,
do
not look for evidence that the accused acted in word or deed against Soviet power.
The
first
questions that you ought to
What is his origin? What is his education or profession? And it is these questions put are:
To what
class does
he belong?
that ought to determine the fate of the accused. In this lies
the significance and essence of the
While Dzerzhinsky and
his lieutenants
Red
Terror. 21
were converted to Red Terror
only by what they saw as the objective needs of class war, some of the
Cheka rank and file, especially in the provinces, showed minded enjoyment of brutality. Yakov Khristoforovich
a less highPeters, the
most important of Dzerzhinsky's early deputies, later acknowledged that "many filthy elements" had tried to attach themselves to the Cheka. 22 He omitted to mention that some of them succeeded. Cheka atrocities, though on a smaller scale than those of Stalin's NKVD, were every bit as horrific. Until the
summer
of 1918 the Cheka's use of terror was mode-
rated by the Left Socialist Revolutionaries (LSRs), on
whose support
the Bolsheviks initially relied. In January 1918 despite opposition from
Lenin and Dzerzhinsky, the LSRs in Sovnarkom successfully demanded representation in the Cheka. One of the four LSRs appointed to the Cheka Collegium, Vyacheslav Alexeevich Aleksandrovich, became Dzerzhinsky's deputy. In March 1918 the LSRs left Sovnarkom in protest against the peace of Brest-Litovsk with Germany. The Bolshevik Party changed its name to Communist, and Sovnarkom, henceforth wholly Communist, moved its seat of government and the Russian capital from Petrograd to Moscow. But though the LSRs had left the government, remarkably they remained in the Cheka. Indeed, ac-
cording to the
LSR
version of events, Dzerzhinsky pleaded with
to stay, telling their leader
Maria Spiridonova
that,
them
without their sup-
The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy" port,
he would "no longer be able to tame the bloodthirsty impulses in
[Cheka] ranks." So long as the
no executions
LSR
his
45
LSRs remained
for political crimes.
in the
Cheka, there were
Dzerzhinsky had such confidence in
deputy, Aleksandrovich, that after the
move
to
Moscow he
surrendered to him the main responsibility for day-to-day administration so that he could concentrate
on operational work. 23
The Cheka established its Moscow headquarters at Bolshaia Lubyanka 11, previously occupied by the Yakor (Anchor) Insurance Company and Lloyd's of London. (Later it moved to number 2, formerly the home of the Rossia Insurance Company, now the headquar24 ters of the KGB and renamed Ulitsa Dzerzhinskogo 2. ) What Dzerzhinsky called the "bloodthirsty impulses" among the Cheka rank and file inevitably made their arrival in Moscow unwelcome. Among the Chekists'
first
Moscow
victims was the celebrated circus clown Bim-
Bom, whose repertoire included jokes about the Communists. Like the
KGB,
the
Cheka was not noted
subversion.
When
for
its
sense of humor about ideological
stern-faced Chekists advanced on
one of his performances, the circus audience assumed all
mood changed
part of the fun. Their
to panic as
Bim-Bom during at first that
Bim-Bom
it
fled
was
from
the ring with the Chekists firing after him. 25
weapon used by the Cheka against counterrevolution was agent penetration. Though Dzerzhinsky denounced the Tsarist tradition of agents provocateurs, he quickly became expert at using them. 26 By the beginning of 1918, according to a Besides terror, the main
Soviet official history, Chekists were already "regularly undertaking
such dangerous operations" as agent penetration: "The situation of the tense class struggle
counterrevolution.
demanded quick
Any
courage and valor were his natural version of events, the
action in exposing the nests of
careless step could cost the Chekist his
first
traits."
life.
According to the
But
KGB
major success of Cheka penetration was
achieved against the organization called Union of Struggle against the Bolsheviks and the Dispatch of Troops to [General] Kaledin, based in Petrograd. cer,
A
Chekist
named Golubev, posing
as a former Tsarist
"succeeded in quickly penetrating the Union, exposing
bers of the
White
officers'
of their secret meetings."
offi-
many mem-
underground, and in finding out the location
As a result, during January and February,
the
whole Union, about four thousand strong, "was exposed by the Chekists and rendered completely harmless, with aid from the Red Guards." 27 Much expanded during the 1930s, the Cheka's two most effective techniques in destroying opposition to the Bolsheviks, terror
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
46
and agent penetration, formed the achievements of Stalin's
basis of the
two most
striking
NKVD: the greatest peacetime Terror in Euro-
pean history and the largest-scale penetration of foreign government bureaucracies ever achieved by any intelligence service.
The
first
major
expansion of both terror and agent penetration, however, occurred during the Civil
War
of 1918-20.
The young Soviet regime faced a bewildering variety of threats to its survival. The October Revolution and its aftermath had left it in initial control only of Petrograd, Moscow, and a fluctuating area within roughly a three-hundred-mile radius of Moscow (rather more to the east, less to the south). Most of the rest of Russia was in administrative chaos. The dispersal of the democratically elected Constituent Assembly effectively destroyed the Bolsheviks' claims, in the eyes of most of
the world (but not, of course, their own), to be the legitimate govern-
ment of Russia. Their problems were compounded by the draconian peace settlement that the Germans demanded and which Lenin insisted Soviet Russia
had no option but to accept. "If you are not inclined
crawl on your belly through the mud," Lenin told the in the Bolshevik leadership
many
to
doubters
(who included Dzerzhinsky), "then you are
not a revolutionary but a chatterbox."
By the peace of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918 (nullified eight months later by the Allied victory on the Western Front), the Bolsheviks were forced to consent to the dismemberment of western Russia. In May the revolt in Siberia of the Czechoslovak Legion recruited by the former Tsarist
By
army marked
the beginning of two and a half years of civil war.
July there were eighteen anti-Bolshevik governments in what re-
mained of the old Tsarist Empire. Recognized only by its German conqueror (until it in turn was conquered in November), the Soviet regime was an international pariah. By the summer of 1918 the remaining Allied diplomats stranded in Soviet Russia were conspiring with the
Bolsheviks' opponents, and the British, French, American, and Japanese
governments had begun military intervention. 28
The Bolsheviks saw of a great Allied
the Civil
War from
plot. In reality the revolt
the beginning as part
of the Czechoslovak Legion
had been prompted not by the Allies but by fears for its own survival by Leon Trotsky, now commissar for war, to disarm it. 29 To Lenin and Sovnarkom, however, it seemed evident that the Czechs were the tools of "the Anglo-French stockbrokers." "What we are after attempts
involved in," said Lenin in July, "is a systematic, methodical and
The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy" evidently long-planned military
and
financial
47
counterrevolutionary
campaign against the Soviet Republic, which all the representatives of Anglo-French imperialism have been preparing for months." 30 The KGB still tends to interpret all plots and attacks against the young Soviet regime as "manifestations of a unified conspiracy" by its class
home and the "imperialist powers" abroad. The reality was different. Had there been a "unified conspiracy," the Bolshevik
enemies very
31
at
regime could never have survived.
During 1919 the Bolsheviks faced three great military the spring attack by the forces of the former Tsarist naval
threats:
commander
Admiral Kolchak from Siberia, and the summer offensives by the White generals Denikin and Yudenich from, respectively, the Caucasus and the Gulf of Finland. Yudenich reached the outskirts of Petrograd and almost succeeded
in cutting the railway linking
the Bolsheviks survived these attacks brilliant leadership of the
was due,
Red Army. Their
with Moscow. That
in part, to Trotsky's
survival
however, to the divisions of their opponents. sives of
it
Had
owed even more,
the separate offen-
Kolchak, Denikin, and Yudenich been part of a coordinated
onslaught on Petrograd and Moscow, the counterrevolution would
probably have triumphed. Instead, each of the White armies acted independently of the others. Each of the main anti-Bolshevik com-
manders was anxious to reserve for himself the honor of defeating the Soviet regime, and each in isolation failed. The Red Army portrayed itself as fighting not for a minority government but for the people of Russia against White generals whose only program was reaction and whose only interest was the restoration of their own former privileges. The chaos of the Civil War offered Western governments an opportunity that was never to return to undo the October Revolution. They failed to take it. Until victory over Germany had been secured in November 1918, the main aim of Allied intervention was not ideological, as
Soviet historians have traditionally claimed, but military: to ease
the pressure on the Western Front at a critical
peace of Brest-Litovsk enabled the
Germans
moment
in the war.
to transfer large
The
numbers
of troops from the Eastern Front and launch their biggest offensive in the
West
since the beginning of the war.
To
the British commander-in-
Haig it seemed that the supreme crisis of the war had come. He told his troops in a famous order of the day on April 1 1 "Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our chief Field Marshal
cause, each one of us
must
fight
on to the end." By June 1918 the
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
48
Germans were on
the
Marne and
threatening Paris.
The
fate of the
Bolshevik regime in the East was, by comparison, of only minor importance.
Though
the tide of
war
in the
of the summer, the speed of the
West turned rapidly
final
German
in the course
collapse in the
autumn
took the Allies by surprise.
The
inept plots against the Soviet regime devised by Western
diplomats and intelligence
officers in
Russia during the
summer of 1918
never posed any serious threat to the Bolsheviks. Indeed, the Cheka
seemed
positively anxious to encourage the plotters to enlarge their
plots in order to
win a propaganda victory by exposing them. Even
after
the armistice with Germany, when Western governments gave more serious attention to overthrowing the Bolshevik regime, their attempts
do so were at best half-hearted. Two or three Allied divisions landed Gulf of Finland in 1919 could probably have forced their way to Moscow and overthrown the Soviet government. But in the aftermath of the First World War not even two or three divisions could be found. Those troops that were sent served mainly to discredit the White cause and thus actually to assist the Bolsheviks. They were too few to affect the outcome of the Civil War but sufficient to allow the Bolsheviks to brand their opponents as the tools of Western imperialism. to
in the
Most Bolsheviks, however, imagined themselves onslaught from the
full
The Cheka proudly it
facing a determined
might of Western capitalism.
KGB
claimed, and the
still
believes, that
played a crucial part in defending the young Soviet state against a
gigantic conspiracy by
Western
capital
and
its
secret services. In 1921
Lenin paid tribute to the Cheka as "our devastating weapon against countless conspiracies and countless attempts against Soviet
people
who
power by
are infinitely stronger than us":
Gentlemen
capitalists of
Russia and abroad!
We know
that
it is
not possible for you to love this establishment. Indeed,
it is
not! It has
machinations
been able to counter your intrigues and your
like
no one
else
when you had surrounded
when you were smothering us, when you
us with invaders, and
were organizing internal conspiracies and would stop in order to wreck our peaceful work. 32
at
no
crime
Though were
the conspiracies of Western diplomats and intelligence services
far feebler
than Lenin alleged or the
Cheka did indeed achieve
KGB
still
supposes, the
a series of successes against them. Its most
The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy"
49
weapon was the use of penetration agents ("moles") and agents provocateurs of the kind pioneered by the Okhrana. The Cheka's successful
first
major penetration of a Western embassy, however, went badly
wrong.
The only power with whom
the Bolshevik regime had formal
diplomatic relations was Imperial Germany, with
envoys after Brest-Litovsk.
On
whom
April 23, 1918, a
it
exchanged
German embassy
Moscow. Six days later a member of Mirbach's mission wrote in his diary: "Here we must be ever on the alert for approaches by agents and provocateurs. The Soviet authorities have rapidly revived the former Tsarist Okhrana ... in at least equal size and in more merciless temper, if in somewhat different form." Penetration of the German embassy was made the responsibility of a counterespionage section set up in May 1918 within the Cheka's Department for Combating Counterrevolution. In 1921-22 the coununder Count Wilhelm Mirbach installed
itself in
terespionage section was to be expanded to form the Counterespionage
Department or KRP, the ancestor of today's Second Chief Directorate KGB. The first head of the section, a twenty-year-old Left Socialist Revolutionary (LSR) named Yakov Blyumkin, was probably the youngest section chief in KGB history. Blyumkin successfully penetrated the German embassy by recruiting Count Robert Mirbach, who was an Austrian relative of the German ambassador and had become a Russian prisoner of war. In June Blyumkin extracted from Mirbach a signed undertaking to supply the Cheka with secret intelligence on Germany and the German embassy. 33
in the
Dzerzhinsky, however, had been unwise to entrust the penetration of the bitterly
German embassy
to
Blyumkin, for the LSRs remained
opposed to the treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
On
July 4 the
LSR
German ambaswould thus dramatically bring to an end Bolshevik "appeasement" of the Germans, renew the war on the Eastern Front, and advance the cause of world revolution. The assassination was entrusted to Blyumkin and an LSR photographer working under him in the Cheka, Nikolai Andreev. On the morning of July 6 Blyumkin prepared a document on Cheka notepaper with the forged signatures of Dzerzhinsky and the Cheka secretary authorizing himself and Andreev to hold talks with the German ambassador. Dzerzhinsky's LSR deputy, Aleksandrovich, was then brought into the plot by Blyumkin and he added the official Cheka seal. The same afternoon Blyumkin and Andreev drove to the German Central Committee approved a plot to assassinate the sador, in the belief that they
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
50
embassy and secured a meeting with the ambassador on the pretext of Count Robert Mirbach. Blyumkin
discussing the case of his relative later
claimed that he himself
fired the revolver shots that killed the
ambassador. According to the evidence of embassy
Blyumkin's three shots
all
staff,
however,
missed their target and Count Wilhelm
Mirbach was gunned down by Andreev. 34
The Cheka's
early career as "the shield
and sword of the Revo-
lution" thus almost ended in disaster. Instead of defending the
Communist
new
became the instrument of its destruction. Lenin telegraphed Stalin that Mirbach's assassination had brought Russia within "a hair's-breadth" of renewed war with Germany. The assassination was followed by an LSR rising, in which the Cheka's Lubyanka headquarters was seized and Dzerzhinsky taken prisoner. But the LSRs had no clear plan of campaign and their rising was crushed within twenty-four hours by Lettish troops loyal to the Communists. On July 8, Dzerzhinsky stepped down from the Cheka state, in
leadership at his
July 1918
own
it
nearly
request while a commission of inquiry investi-
gated the circumstances of the rising and the
Cheka was purged of
LSRs. By the time Dzerzhinsky was reinstated as chairman on August 22, the
Cheka had become an
use of terror against
its
exclusively
political
Communist agency, whose
opponents was no longer restrained by
the moderating influence of the LSRs.
"We
represent in ourselves
organized terror," said Dzerzhinsky. "This must be said very clearly." 35
Lenin took an
active, if naive, interest in the application of
technology as well as terror to the hunt for counterrevolutionaries.
He
was attracted by the idea that a large electromagnet could be devised that would detect concealed weapons in house-to-house searches, and pressed the idea on the Cheka. Dzerzhinsky, however, was unimpressed. "Magnets," he told Lenin, "are not much use in searches. We have tested them." But he agreed as an experiment to take large magnets on house searches in the hope that counterrevolutionaries would be frightened into handing over their weapons themselves. 36 The experiment was soon abandoned.
The Cheka's
penetration of Allied missions and intelligence networks Russia ended more successfully than its operations against the German embassy. The still regards as one of its great past triumphs in
KGB
the Cheka's uncovering in the
summer
of 1918 of the so-called "Lock-
hart plot," involving British, French, and secret agents.
American diplomats and Robert Bruce Lockhart, formerly acting British consul-
The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy"
51
Moscow, was an able but erratic member of the consular service, whose career had twice been interrupted by his complicated love affairs. At the beginning of 1918, after the withdrawal of the British ambassador, Lockhart was sent back to Russia to make unofficial contact with the Bolshevik regime. He achieved little. The general in prerevolutionary
—
aim of his mission to persuade the Bolsheviks to continue the war with Germany by promising them Allied aid ended in failure. Even after the peace of Brest-Litovsk, however, Lockhart did original
—
He
not immediately lose hope.
peace treaty, there were resistance to
"still
reported to
London
Germany." Trotsky, the commissar
Chicherin, his successor as commissar for foreign to
that, despite the
considerable opportunities of organizing for war, affairs,
and Georgi
both anxious
keep open communications with London, encouraged Lockhart to
believe that Brest-Litovsk might not last long. Lockhart, however, lost the ear
be bad,"
of his government. "Although Mr. Lockhart's advice
commented one Foreign
accused of having followed
it."
Once Lockhart himself
Office official acidly,
had
may
"we cannot be
37
lost
hope of reviving the war on the
Eastern Front, he changed rapidly from pro-Bolshevik diplomat to anti-Bolshevik conspirator.
By mid-May he was
in contact
with agents
of the anti-Bolshevik underground led by the former Socialist Revolutionary terrorist Boris Savinkov, organizer of the prewar assassinations
of Plehve and the
Grand Duke
Sergei. In his
memoirs Lockhart
later
London he forwarded without comment
denied giving Savinkov any encouragement. His telegrams to tell
a different story.
On May
23, 1918,
by one of Savinkov's agents "to murder all Bolshevik leaders on night of Allies landing and to form a Government which will be in reality a military dictatorship." By now Lockhart had become an ardent supporter of Allied military interven-
to the Foreign Office a plan supplied
tion to help
government,
overthrow the Communist regime. As yet the British still
preoccupied by the problems of winning the war with
Germany, was not. The Secret
Intelligence Service, then
known
as
Mile, added
further to the confusion caused by Lockhart. In addition to the
Mile
commander, Lieutenant Ernest Boyce, who remained nominally in charge of secret-service work in Russia, several other officers arrived to try their luck in the early months of 1918. Lockhart formed 'a very poor opinion" of their work. "However brave and however gifted as station
linguists," they were, in his opinion, "frequently incapable of
a reliable political judgment."
forming
They were deceived by forged documents
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
52
alleging that the
Communist
leaders were in the pay of the
Germans
and by false reports of regiments of German prisoners of war in Siberia
armed by the Bolsheviks. Mile was still a peripheral element in British Cheka persuaded itself, the powerful arm of a secret strategy drawn up at the very center of Whitehall's
foreign policy rather than, as the
corridors of power.
The modern
British secret service, the forerunner of today's
was founded only in 1909. Until the outbreak of war it remained a tiny, underfunded agency unable to afford a single full-time station SIS,
chief abroad.
As
a secret report later acknowledged, because of
shortage of funds, until 1914 "use had to be
whose employment
as a class has by
made
war experience been
demonstrated to be undesirable." During the First World
underwent both a considerable expansion and a tion.
By
the beginning of 1918
it
its
of casual agents clearly
War Mile
partial professionaliza-
controlled a network of over four
hundred Belgian and French agents reporting regularly and accurately on German troop movements in occupied Belgium and northern France.
main successes were on the Western Front. Russia, by comparison, was still a sideshow. Mile officers in Russia had a good deal in common with the enthusiastic amateurs and serving officers used for secret service work in Victorian and EdBoth Mile's
wardian Britain service.
priorities
in the
and
its
days before the founding of a professional secret
Their swashbuckling adventures had
little
discernible influence
on British policy to Communist Russia. The Cheka, however, saw their sometimes eccentric exploits as evidence not of confusion or amateurism but of a deep-laid, labyrinthine plot by Western intelligence services.
38
Though Lockhart had Russia, the sheer audacity of
a low opinion of
its
Mile
operations in
most extrovert agent, Sidney
Reilly,
took his breath away. Reilly had been born Sigmund Rosenblum, the only son of a wealthy Jewish family in Russian Poland, in 1874. During the 1890s he broke off contact with his family and emigrated to London.
Thereafter he became a self-confident, intrepid international adven-
who wove web of fantasy that sometimes deceived
turer, fluent in several languages, expert in sexual seduction,
around
his cosmpolitan career a
Reilly himself
and has since ensnared most of those who have written
about him. Though a tradecraft
fantasist, Reilly possessed a flair for intelligence
combined with an
indifference to danger that
ration of both Sir Mansfield
Cumming,
the
first
won
the admi-
head of the Secret
The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy" Intelligence
Service,
53
and Winston Churchill. Lockhart described
Reilly's flamboyant personality as a mixture of "the artistic tempera-
ment of the Jew with the devil-may-care daring of the Irishman." 39 Reilly, claims vice,
one bestselling history of the British Secret Ser-
"wielded more power, authority and influence than any other
was an expert assassin "by poisoning, stabbing, shooting and and possessed "eleven passports and a wife to go with 40 each." The facts of Reilly's career, though on a somewhat less epic scale, are still remarkable. Before the First World War, he had established himself in St. Petersburg as a successful businessman and bigamist, who was also employed by Cumming as a part-time "casual spy,"
throttling,"
agent."
When
Reilly returned to Russia in the spring of 1918 with the
code name ST
1,
adventure to low
his exploits farce.
sometimes crossed the border from high
The Cheka, not
surprisingly, failed to see the
joke.
Reilly teristic
tries
announced
his arrival in
Moscow on May
bravado by marching up to the Kremlin
7 with charac-
gates, telling the sen-
he was an emissary from Lloyd George, and demanding to see
Lenin personally. Remarkably, he managed to get as far as one of Lenin's leading aides, Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich,
standably bemused.
The Commissariat
who was
for Foreign Affairs called
under-
Lock-
hart to inquire whether Bonch-Bruyevich's visitor was an impostor.
Lockhart
later
admitted that he "nearly blurted out that [Reilly] must
be a Russian masquerading as an Englishman or else a discovering from Boyce, the British agent,
Lockhart
Mile
lost his
madman." On
station chief, that Reilly
temper,
summoned
was a
Reilly to his office,
"dressed him down like a schoolmaster and threatened to have him sent home." But, recalled Lockhart, Reilly was "so ingenious in his excuses that in the end he made me laugh." Reilly then adopted a new disguise as a Levantine Greek, recruited further mistresses to assist him in his work, and began plotting Lenin's overthrow in earnest. 41 Reilly still tends to bemuse Soviet intelligence specialists who study his bizarre career. According to a 1979 official Soviet history of Military Chekists, "rich with heroic deeds," but guaranteed to "contain
nothing sensational or imaginary," Reilly was born in Odessa of an
and a Russian mother. The same "strictly documenhim as the Mile "main resident" (head of station) in Russia, a post actually held by Ernest Boyce. 42 Reilly's career has a particular fascination for the present chairman of the KGB, General Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov. In 1979, while "Irish captain"
tary" account also misidentifies
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
54
head of the First Chief (Foreign Intelligence) Directorate, his probably stimulated by a recent in-house history of the
interest
KGB, Kryuch-
kov summoned all the books on Reilly from the FCD library. "And," 43 said one of the librarians, "he seems to be reading them." The most celebrated of Reilly 's colleagues in Mile's Russian
code-named IK 8, was, and as bold as Reilly" and "spoke "Jolly George Hill," as Kim Philby later de-
operations, Captain (later Brigadier) G. A. Hill, in Lockhart's opinion, "as brave
Russian just as well." 44
scribed him, 45 considered his days as a British spy in Russia "a joyful
adventure in the pages of my
life."
His boyhood travels with his father,
"an English pioneer merchant of the best type" whose business interests
had stretched from Siberia to ing. Hill arrived in
to join a
him what he considered
Persia, gave
better preparation for espionage than
any amount of professional
train-
Russia two months before the Bolshevik Revolution
Royal Flying Corps mission, but began working for Mile
the spring of 1918. Like Lockhart, he hoped at
down and
Brest-Litovsk would break
first
in
that the treaty of
that the Bolsheviks could be
persuaded to rejoin the war against Germany.
Hill's
memoirs, grandly
Go Spy the Land, describe with an exuberant lack of modesty how he won Trotsky's confidence and helped to mastermind the early
entitled
development of both Soviet military intelligence and the Cheka: Lectures to Trotsky, theater and supper parties did not interfere with the
work
had planned.
I
First of all I helped the
Bolshevik military headquarters to organize an Intelligence Section for the purpose of identifying
German
units
on the
Russian Front and for keeping the troop movements under close observation.
.
.
.
Secondly,
I
organized a Bolshevik
counterespionage section to spy on the vice
and Missions
in
German
Secret Ser-
Petrograd and Moscow. 46
contemporary reports to Mile and the War Office tell a less sensational, though still impressive tale. He "got the Moscow District Hill's
Commander to organize a Bolshevik identifications section German units], and promised them every assistance from En-
Military [for
gland." But there
is no evidence that, as Hill claimed in his memoirs, he personally helped to found the section. Nor is it likely that Hill played any part in founding the Cheka's Counterespionage Section in
May
19 18. 47
He
later
admitted that he never met
Blyumkin. 48 But there
may
well have been
some
its first
head,
Yakov
limited exchange of
The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy"
German
between Hill and the Cheka.
intelligence
When
Moscow
officer for the Special
Operations Executive. According to
"The Russians
him with
the
summer
hailed
Anglo-Soviet
was established on a more substantial
intelligence collaboration
during the Second World War, Hill returned to
of 1918 Hill's
delight.
first
They knew
all
55
scale
as liaison
Kim
Philby,
about him." 49 By
brief experience of cooperation with
come to an end. Having despaired, like Lockhart, of persuading the Communist regime to reenter the war with Germany, he set up a network cf his own to identify German and Soviet intelligence had
Austrian units on the Eastern Front and, with the help of "patriotic
Russian
prepare for sabotage against them. 50
officers," to
By
July 1918 Lockhart himself, despite his later denials,
was
Communist Moscow, Fernand
also deeply involved in supporting plots to overthrow the
regime. Together with the French consul-general in
Grenard, he handed over ten million rubles to the counterrevolutionary National Center group in Moscow, loosely linked to Savinkov in the
Northeast and the White
Army
of the Tsarist General Alekseev in
Kuban. But neither Lockhart nor Grenard was any match for Dzerzhinsky. In June Dzerzhinsky dispatched two Chekists of Lettish origin, Yan Buikis and Yan Sprogis, using the aliases Shmidken and Bredis, to Petrograd, where they posed as representatives of the Moscow counterrevolutionary underground seeking Allied support. There they obtained an introduction to Captain Cromie, R.N., naval attache at the British
ambassador's Baltic Fleet
Cromie
if
embassy,
who had
stayed on in Petrograd after the
recall
with the principal aim of blowing up the Russian
there
was any danger of its falling into German hands. and Sprogis to Reilly, who was deeply
in turn introduced Buikis
impressed by their reports of disaffection
Moscow. Reilly saw Communist regime.
The
in the Letts the
among
the Lettish troops in
key to the overthrow of the
Moscow. Whoever conThe Letts were not Bolsheviks; they were Bolshevik servants because they had no other resort. They were foreign hirelings. Foreign hirelings serve for money. They are at the disposal of the highest bidder. If I could buy the Letts my task would be easy. Letts were the only soldiers in
trolled the Letts controlled the capital.
Buikis and Sprogis allowed themselves to be persuaded by Cromie and Reilly to call
on Lockhart
in
Moscow. 51
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
56
Preparations for an anti-Bolshevik coup in
Moscow
coincided
with the beginning of British military intervention against the Bol-
A company of marines commanded by Major General Frederick Poole had landed at the Arctic port of Murmansk on March 6, only three days after the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. But the marines had not been sent to overthrow the Bolsheviks. Their landing was intended instead to prevent the Germans from getting the vast quantities of Allied war materials shipped to Murmansk for use on sheviks in northern Russia.
the Eastern Front. Allied intervention changed in character
second landing
at
when Poole made
a
Archangel on August 2 with a detachment of Royal
Marines, a French battalion, and
American
fifty
sailors.
The
ostensible
purpose of the Archangel landing was, once again, to prevent war supplies from falling into
German
with an anti-Bolshevik coup.
hands, but
Two
it
was timed
to coincide
groups of Allied agents, landed
were caught and
secretly a fortnight before the arrival of the marines,
imprisoned by the Bolsheviks. But a successful coup was carried out on the night of August officer
1
by Captain Georgi Chaplin, a Russian naval
formerly attached to the Royal Navy,
who was
almost certainly
acting in concert with Poole's intelligence chief, Colonel C.
Thornhill (formerly of Mile).
When
J.
M.
Poole's troops landed next day,
they did so at the invitation of a self-styled anti-Bolshevik "Supreme
Administration of the Northern Region." 52 Curiously, the Allied landing at Archangel, where Poole established himself as a virtual viceroy ruling by decree, did not immediately
cause an open breach between Britain and the Bolsheviks. Office cabled
Lockhart on August
"You should
8:
The Foreign
so far as possible
maintain existing relations with the Bolshevik Government. 53 Rupture, or declaration of war, should come,
if
come
it
must, from Bolsheviks
not from the Allies." During the second week of August the Cheka's Lettish agents provocateurs, Buikis and Sprogis, called on Lockhart at his
Moscow
office
and presented a
claimed to be "always on
my
inspected the letter carefully.
letter
from Cromie. Lockhart, who
guard against agents provocateurs,"
He was
quickly reassured. Both the writ-
ing and the spelling were unmistakably Cromie's:
he was making his
bang the dore officer."
[sic]
own arrangements
"The expression that and hoped 'to
to leave Russia
before he went out' was typical of this very gallant
54
Shortly afterward Buikis brought along to a second meeting with Lockhart another agent provocateur, Colonel Eduard Berzin, de-
The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy" scribed by Lockhart as "a
and hard,
features
man
powerfully-built
tall,
steely eyes, ... in
command
regiments which formed the Praetorian
57
with clear-cut
of one of the Lettish
Guard of
the Soviet Govern-
ment." 55 This time Reilly and Grenard, the French consul-general, were present as well. All were persuaded by Berzin that the Lettish troops
were ready to join an anti-Bolshevik revolt and that "everything could be arranged
tions
in the
space of about
five to six
weeks." At Lockhart's
was agreed that Reilly should "take charge" of all negotiawith the Letts, conducted from about August 20 onward in a safe
proposal,
it
house provided by the Cheka. 56 To finance the coup, Reilly provided 57 1,200,000 rubles, which Berzin passed on to the Cheka.
French and American agents were also involved, like Mile, in On August 25, at a meeting of Allied
assisting anti-Bolshevik groups.
agents at the
Moscow
United States consul-general, de Witt
office of the
Poole, also attended by the French military attache General Lavergne (but not by Lockhart),
it
was agreed that
after the
impending departure
of the remaining Allied diplomatic staff from Russia, espionage and
sabotage would be conducted by stay-behind Allied agents: Reilly for Britain, Colonel
Henri de Vertement for France and Xenophon de
Blumental Kalamatiano (an American of Russian-Greek descent) for the United States. a
Cheka
agent:
Among
those present at the meeting, however, was
Rene Marchand,
a journalist attached to the French
who had become a secret supporter of the Bolsheviks and became a founder member of the French Communist Party. 58 mission,
On August
28 Reilly
with anti-Bolshevik Letts in
left
later
for Petrograd to hold secret meetings
company with
the
Cheka agent provoca-
teur Colonel Berzin. 59
For the moment Dzerzhinsky preferred to bide his time and give the Allied conspirators in Moscow and Petrograd enough rope to hang themselves. This leisurely game of cat and mouse was cut short on August 30 when the head of the Petrograd Cheka, M. Uritsky, was assassinated by a military cadet, and Lenin himself was shot and seriously wounded by a possibly deranged Socialist Revolutionary named Fanya (Dora) Kaplan. These two unconnected incidents five hundred polititwo days. 60 In the early hours of August 31, according to the Soviet version of events, "Cheka agents started the liquidation of the Lockhart conspiracy." Though the Cheka failed to catch Reilly, it caught the American agent Kalamatiano, then posing as a Russian engineer under the alias Serpovsky, and discovered in a hollow cane in his apartment a list
unleashed a reign of terror. In Petrograd alone over cal prisoners
were executed
in
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
58
of the
money he had
61 distributed to Russian agents.
Though Lockhart,
unlike Reilly and Kalamatiano, could claim diplomatic immunity, he
was awakened
in his
rough voice ordering
up
apartment
at
about 3:30 a.m. on August 31 by "a
me to get up at once." He opened his eyes,
"looked
and discovered about ten armed
into the steely barrel of a revolver,"
Chekists in his bedroom.
He was byanka
driven with his assistant Captain Hicks to the Lu-
to be interrogated
by Dzerzhinsky's
assistant, the Lett
and waving as a poet's
Peters, "his black hair, long
.
.
.
brushed back
over a high forehead," his expression "grim and formidable."
know met
the Kaplan
woman?" asked
her, according to his
Peters.
Yakov
"Do you
Though Lockhart had never
account of the interrogation he claimed
diplomatic immunity and replied that Peters had no right to question
him. reply.
"Where is Reilly?" Peters continued. Again Lockhart made no Then Peters produced from a folder a pass to General Poole in
Archangel, which Lockhart had given the Cheka's Lettish agents. "Is that your writing?" he asked.
For the
first
time Lockhart realized that
Buikis and Sprogis were agents provocateurs, but he that Colonel Berzin
was
also part of the
Cheka
still
plot.
failed to grasp
Once
again, he
informed Peters "with studious politeness" that he could answer no questions. 62
Peters later gave a rather different account of the interrogation
of Lockhart, who, he claimed, "was so frightened that he did not even present his diplomatic papers. Probably the poor English diplomatic representative thought he
was being accused of Lenin's murder, and he
probably had a bad conscience." 63 Lockhart himself believed that the
main purpose of Peters's questions was to link him with Fanya Kaplan's attempt on Lenin's life. His immediate anxiety, however, was the notebook in his breast pocket. The Cheka agents who arrested him ransacked his apartment but failed to notice the notebook in his jacket,
which recorded "in cryptic form" the money disbursed by Lockhart no doubt including the funds given to Savinkov and Reilly. Expecting any moment, Lockhart asked to go With two armed guards standing over him, he coolly to be searched at
rassing pages from his notebook
At about 6 a.m.
a
woman
and used them
to the lavatory.
tore the embar-
as toilet paper.
64
dressed in black, with black hair and
"great black rings under her eyes," was brought to join Lockhart and
Hicks
in their
room
in the
Lubyanka.
The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy"
We
59
was Kaplan. Doubtless the Bolsheviks hoped that she would give us some sign of recognition. Her composure was unnatural. She went to the window and leaning her guessed
it
chin upon her hand, looked out into the daylight.
And
there
she remained, motionless, speechless, apparently resigned to her
fate, until
presently the sentries
came and took her away.
Fanya Kaplan was shot four days later in a Kremlin courtyard, still uncertain whether her attempt on Lenin's life had succeeded. At 9 a.m. Lockhart and Hicks were freed from the Lubyanka, and left to make their own way home. Back at Lockhart's flat, they discovered that his mistress, Mura Beckendorff, had been arrested by the Cheka. 65 Reilly,
meanwhile, was
Petrograd, probably unaware of
in
Lockhart's arrest. At midday on August 31, three hours after Lockhart's release,
station chief.
he arrived
at the
apartment of Ernest Boyce, the Mile
There he outlined the plan
for a rising
by the Lettish
troops guarding the Kremlin. According to Reilly's account of their
Boyce described the plan as "extremely risky" but "worth failed, however, he said that the responsibility would be Boyce then left for the British embassy, intending to bring
discussion, trying." If Reilly's.
it
Captain Cromie back to his apartment to be briefed by Reilly. 66 By the time he arrived, Cromie was dead.
A
crowd
led
by Cheka agents,
enraged by a rumor that Uritsky's assassin had been given shelter in the embassy, stormed into the building. Cromie confronted the mob, was told to get out of the
way or "be
shot like a dog," opened
killed in the gunfight that followed.
fire,
and was
67
A Cheka raid in the early hours of September 1 on the apartment of the French agent de Vertement, probably after information had been supplied by the Cheka informant Rene Marchand, led to the discovery of explosives intended for use in sabotage operations. 68
Though de Vertement himself escaped
capture,
Sovnarkom announced
triumphantly next day:
Today, September
French diplomats,
2,
the conspiracy organized by Anglo-
head of which was the chief of the French consul-general Grenard, the French General Lavergne, and others, was liquiat the
British Mission, Lockhart, the
dated.
The purpose of
this
conspiracy was to organize the
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
60
capture of the Council of People's Commissars and the proc-
lamation of a military dictatorship
in
Moscow;
this
was
to
be done by bribing Soviet troops.
The statements made no mention of the
fact that the plan to use Soviet
troops (the Lettish battalions) in a military coup had been devised by
Cheka agents provocateurs. It also sought to excuse the violation of Lockhart's diplomatic immunity by claiming implausibly that his identity had not been clear when he was arrested: At the secret headquarters of the conspirators an Englishman was arrested who after being brought before the Special Investigating Commission, said that he
was the
British diplo-
matic representative, Lockhart. After the identity of the arrested Lockhart
had been
established, he
was immediately
released.
The Sovnarkom statement identified as
did,
however, correctly reveal that Reilly,
"one of Lockhart's agents," had provided 1,200,000 rubles
to finance the plot. It also correctly claimed that other Allied missions
were involved. Though Rene Marchand was not publicly a
identified as
Cheka informant, he gave an account of the meeting of Allied agents
held on August 25 to discuss espionage and sabotage in a letter of
Raymond Poincare. A copy of the was conveniently discovered, no doubt by prior arrangement, in the course of a Cheka search and published in the Communist press. 69 In the Sovnarkom statement of September 2, as in subsequent
protest to the French president, letter
Soviet pronouncements, Lockhart
the Allied conspiracy. Lockhart's crisis,
was presented
as the ringleader of
own main concern
at this stage in the
however, was for the safety of his imprisoned mistress.
On
Sep-
tember 4 he went to the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs to plead, without success, for Mura's release. Then, impulsively, he decided to appeal directly to Peters and walked to the Lubyanka, where he was
immediately aware that his arrival "caused some excitement and much whispering among the guards in the entrance hall." Peters listened
Mura and told him that his assurance no conspiracy would be carefully considsome trouble," he continued. "My men have
patiently to Lockhart's plea for
that she ered.
had been involved
"You have saved me
in
been looking for you for the past hour. arrest." Despite opposition
I have a warrant for your from the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs,
The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy"
61
which paid greater heed than the Cheka to the principle of diplomatic immunity, Lockhart was arrested on the spot and spent the next month in captivity.
On arrest of
70
September
5,
presumably
in
an attempt to
justify the re-
Lockhart on the previous day, Izvestia published a statement
signed by Dzerzhinsky and Zinoviev, the Petrograd Party boss, that
went much further than the Sovnarkom statement of the 2nd. The English and French were accused of being the "organizers" of the
attempt on Lenin's
life
and the "real murderers" of Uritsky: "They
have murdered Comrade Uritsky because he brought together the 71 threads of an English conspiracy in Petrograd." In reality the Cheka's
agents provocateurs had been trying without
much
success to persuade
English agents to organize an assassination plot, which could then have
been publicly exposed.
On
about August 22 Berzin tried to persuade
Reilly that, for the anti-Bolshevik coup to succeed, there were two
pressing reasons
1.
2.
why Lenin and Trotsky would have
to be assassinated:
Their marvelous oratorical powers would so act on the
psychology of the
men who went
was not advisable
to risk [arrest].
The
to arrest
them
that
it
two of the leaders would create a panic so that there would be no resistance. assassination of
Reilly told Hill that "he
had been very firm
such a course and that he would
in
in dissuading [Berzin]
no way support
it."
The
from
right policy,
insisted, was "not to make martyrs of the leaders but to hold them up to ridicule before the world." 72 The particular form of ridicule Reilly had in mind was to remove Lenin's and Trotsky's trousers, parade them
he
in their
underpants through the streets of Moscow, and so make them
public laughingstocks. 73 publicize a plot to
Not
surprisingly,
it
did not suit the
remove Lenin's and Trotsky's
Cheka
to
trousers. This eccen-
scheme was thus never included in the list of real and imaginary which British agents were accused. Ernest Boyce, the Mile station chief in Petrograd, may have been less hostile than Reilly and
tric
plots of
Hill to the idea of assassination.
One
of his Russian agents claimed that
Boyce had inquired, probably speculatively, "if he was prepared to do away with one or two prominent members of the Soviet government." When the agent threatened blackmail on September 6 and demanded money not to reveal Boyce's inquiry, it was thought "advisable to pay up rather than having anything fresh brought up against us." 74
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
62
By
the time of the attempted blackmail,
Mile
operations in
Russia had virtually collapsed. Boyce had been arrested and thrown into a hideously
overcrowded
jail.
The Cheka
arrested several of
from and was smuggled out of Russia on board a Dutch freighter. Hill too avoided capture but, after eighteen of his agents and couriers had been caught and executed, concluded that he would have to seek further Reilly's mistresses but Reilly himself obtained a forged passport
Hill
instructions
in London in order to "start afresh with new new headquarters." Lockhart, unlike Boyce, spent most
and funds
personnel and
of his captivity in the relative comfort of the apartment of a former lady-in-waiting in the Kremlin. In the course of his imprisonment his mistress, briefly
"was
Mura, was released and allowed
was
to visit him. Berzin
lodged in the same apartment as a stool pigeon, but Lockhart
afraid to exchange a
word with him." In October Lockhart,
Boyce, and Hill were allowed to return
home together with
personnel in exchange for the release of Soviet
officials
other Allied
held in London.
Lockhart's farewell to Peters was strangely amicable. When came on September 28 to announce that Lockhart was to be set free, he gave him a signed photograph, showed him photographs of his English wife in London, and asked him to deliver a letter to her. Then Peters
Peters had second thoughts. "No," he said, "I shan't trouble you.
soon as you're out of here you'll blaspheme and curse
me as
enemy." Lockhart told him not to be a fool: "Politics apart, no grudge. I would remember his kindness to Mura all my the letter." Peters told Lockhart he
would do
As
your worst I
bore him
life. I
took
better to stay in Russia:
"You can be happy and make your own life. We can give you work to 75 is doomed anyway." What Peters omitted to tell Lockhart was that he had evidence that Mura was a German spy. He later do, capitalism
claimed that he did not mention this even at the conspiracy" in December for fear that
it
trial
of "the Lockhart
would damage Lockhart's
career. Peters eventually published this allegation in 1924, however, in
what he called the "rabid anti-Soviet campaign" being conducted by Lockhart in England. 76 protest against
After his release, Lockhart returned to London. So did Boyce
however, on reaching Finland, was ordered by
Cum-
ming, chief of Mile, to return to Russia for a few weeks to
assist
and
Reilly. Hill,
anti-Bolshevik groups in sabotage operations.
mendation, Hill was awarded the
DSO
On Cumming's
and Reilly the
MC
recom-
for their
Russian exploits. In December Lockhart, Reilly, Grenard, and de Vertement were sentenced to death in absentia by the Supreme Revolu-
The Cheka, Counterrevolution, and the "Lockhart Conspiracy"
63
Moscow. Kalamatiano, the American agent arrested on August 31, remained in jail in Moscow. He was twice told he was being taken out to be shot, in unsuccessful attempts to make him tionary Tribunal in
talk,
then reprieved and finally allowed back to the United States in
1921.
77
The Cheka regarded
its
"liquidation of the Lockhart conspir-
acy" as a triumph of heroic proportions. The could say without exaggeration," claims an
KGB
"One
does.
still
"that the
official history,
was equivalent Cheka had won
shattering blow dealt by the Chekists to the conspirators to victory in a
major military
only a minor skirmish. tion of capitalist
Its
battle."
78
In reality, the
opponents had been not a determined
governments but a group of adventurous,
naive Western diplomats and secret agents devices in the chaotic early
rule.
By
Moscow
far the
—the plan a — had been mounted by the Cheka
sophisticated part of the Lockhart conspiracy Lettish troops in
own
largely to their
left
months of Bolshevik
coali-
politically
most
revolt
for
itself.
by
The
Cheka's mastery of the use of penetration agents and agents provocateurs demonstrated during "the Lockhart conspiracy," however,
make
possible a
gence Service
more
in the
was
to
decisive victory over the British Secret Intelli-
course of the 1920s. 79
By the beginning of 1920 the White
forces, though not yet finally no longer posed a serious threat to the Bolshevik regime. A decree signed by Lenin and Dzerzhinsky on January 17 announced the end of the death penalty for "enemies of the Soviet authorities." Within three weeks Lenin had had second thoughts. On February 6 he told a
defeated,
conference of provincial Chekas that the death penalty was simply "a
matter of expediency" and likely to be needed to deal with further "counterrevolutionary movements and revolts." 80
The
Polish invasion
of the Ukraine in April 1920 and the six-month Russo-Polish
followed led to the ruthless stamping out by the
war that Cheka of another wave
of real and imaginary conspiracies. According to a tory:
"The
decisive struggle of the organs of the
KGB
Cheka
.
.
official his.
foiled the
plans of the White Poles and their Entente inspirers to undermine the fighting ability of the
Red Army through
espionage, sabotage and
banditry." 81
By was
the end of 1920, Dzerzhinsky's lieutenant
Martyn
Latsis
asserting the Cheka's right to total supervision of Soviet society:
"Counterrevolution has developed everywhere, in manifesting
itself in
the most diverse forms.
all
It is
spheres of our
life,
therefore clear that
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
64
there
is
no sphere of life exempt from Cheka coverage." Latsis's totaliembryo the Stalinist police state that emerged
tarian vision contained in in the 1930s.
The
82
total of
Cheka executions during the period 1917-21 was
probably well over 250,000. 83 By 1921, however, with the Bolshevik victory in the Civil
War now
secure,
many
in the
Party believed that
Cheka had outlived its usefulness. The Cheka predictably disagreed. Though its growth was temporarily stunted and its powers briefly curtailed, it survived in slightly different form. The Ninth All-Russian Congress of Soviets resolved on December 28, 1921, that "the strengthening of Soviet authority at home and abroad permits the narrowing the
of the functions of the [Cheka] and the
Cheka was replaced by the
its
agencies." 84
On February
1922,
8,
State Political Directorate (Gosudarst-
vennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie or GPU), which was incorporated in the Internal Affairs
Commissariat (NKVD). Dzerzhinsky had been
commissar for internal affairs as well as head of the Cheka since March 1919, and thus retained control of the GPU. On paper at least the powers of the GPU were drastically reduced by comparison with those of the Cheka.
was was
strictly limited to political subversion;
Its
sphere of influence
ordinary criminal justice
to be the responsibility of the law courts
and revolutionary
tribu-
The GPU was given the power only to investigate; it lost the power of summary justice and confinement to concentration camp by adminisnals.
trative order. Gradually,
Cheka's powers.
It
however, the
GPU
recovered most of the
did so with Lenin's blessing; he wrote in
"The law should not
abolish terror: to promise that
May
1922,
would be
self-
delusion or deception." Decrees of August and October 1922 gave the
GPU
the
and in some cases execute counterand certain categories of criminal. the formation of the U.S.S.R. in 1923 the GPU was raised
power
to exile, imprison,
revolutionaries, "bandits,"
On
in status to a federal agency, the Unified State Political Directorate
(Obyeddinenoye
Gosudarstvennoye
Politicheskoye
Upravlenie
or
OGPU). A "judicial collegium" was attached to the OGPU to mete out summary justice to counterrevolutionaries, spies, and terrorists. Whereas the Cheka had been intended as only a temporary expedient its hour of peril, the GPU, OGPU, and
to defend the Revolution in their successors state.
85
were
solidly established at the center of the Soviet
3 Foreign Intelligence and i
i
Active Measures"
the
in
Dzerzhinsky Era
(1919-27) Soviet Russia
beyond
embarked on an ambitious program of covert action
frontiers even before
its
it
began systematic foreign intelligence
While the Cheka during the
collection.
Civil
War was
defending the
Bolshevik regime against a series of real and imaginary conspiracies at
home, the work of Soviet agents abroad was geared to spreading the Revolution.
first
and foremost
The organizer of most of the covert
action,
however, was not the Cheka but the Comintern, the Soviet-dominated
Communist
International,
whose executive committee
(the
ECCI) con-
sidered itself "the general staff of world revolution."
After October 1917 most of the Bolshevik leadership lived in constant expectation that their
own
revolution
would advance across
Europe, then spread around the globe. The crumbling of the great empires of Central Europe during the
final stages
of the war on the
pitch. He wrote on Octo"The international revolution has come so close within the course of one week that we may count on its outbreak during the next
Western Front raised Lenin's hopes to fever ber
1,
1918:
few days.
.
.
.
We
shall all stake
in expediting the revolution
ber
9,
our
lives to
help the
German workers On Novem-
about to begin in Germany."
1
two days before the Armistice, Germany was proclaimed a
65
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
66
republic,
and workers' and
were formed on the Soviet
soldiers' councils
model. Lenin's early hopes, however, were quickly dashed. In January
1919 a Berlin rising supported, though not
initiated,
by the newly
founded German Communist Party (KPD) was crushed, and
its
two
Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, were brumurdered by right-wing army officers. Though the murders de-
charismatic leaders, Rosa tally
stroyed the
KPD's
already slender prospects of replacing the socialist
SPD as the main party of the left, much
easier.
as the
most powerful Marxist
By
they
the time of her death critic
dictation to it by Moscow Rosa Luxemburg had emerged
made
of the Bolshevik regime, accusing
Lenin of creating not dictatorship by the proletariat but dictatorship over the proletariat. She was perhaps the one foreign
up
ble of standing
to
Communist capa-
Lenin and offering more than token opposition to
the transformation of the
Communist
International into a tool of Soviet
foreign policy. 2
The founding congress of the Comintern held at Moscow early March 1919 was a mostly fraudulent piece of Russian revolutionary theater. Only five delegates arrived from abroad. Most of the remainder in
were handpicked by the Bolshevik Central Committee from supporters in Moscow.
Some had never been
foreign
its
to the countries they
were
supposed to represent, and some of the parties of which they were
much of the European left such For countless left-wing militants Moscow had become the socialist New Jerusalem, and the birth of the Comintern only strengthened their enthusiasm. The French Commu-
delegates did not yet exist. But for technicalities scarcely mattered.
nist
Louis-Oscar Frossard spoke for
many
of them:
Assailed by a world of enemies, half starving amid anarchy
and turmoil, Russia was struggling to build that land of justice and harmony that we had all dreamed of. Outlawed and hated everywhere else, there Socialism was triumphant.
What
the Socialists of every country had been wishing for,
wanting, preparing
for,
waiting for in vain, the Socialists of
Over waved the red flag of the more exploitation of man by man! Capital-
Russia, driven by an implacable will, were achieving.
the ancient empire of the Tsars International.
ism had
No
at last
been throttled, floored, dispossessed!
Onward! Mankind was not doomed, day was dawning! 3
for over Russia a
.
.
.
new
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
67
The Comintern's continued faith in world revolution was matched by the foreboding of some Western statesmen. A fortnight after its first congress had dispersed, Lloyd George warned the French prime minister
Georgi Clemenceau:
The whole of Europe is filled with The whole existing order in .
.
.
economic aspects tion
is
the spirit of revolution. its
political, social
and
questioned by the masses of the popula-
from one end of Europe
to the other.
For a few heady weeks the Revolution seemed to be spreading even it. Without prompting from
before the Comintern had begun to export
Moscow, in
were declared
soviet republics
Bavaria on April
7.
in
Hungary on March
21 and
Grigori Zinoviev, the president of the Comintern,
forecast that within a year all
Europe would be Communist. But the
Bolsheviks were forced to stand helplessly by as the Bavarian Soviet
was crushed
after less than a
irregular troops,
and again
in
month by a combination of regular and August as the Hungarian Soviet Republic
was overthrown by a Rumanian invasion. 4 In October 1919 the Comintern established two secret Western European outposts to assist the spread of revolution: the Western European Secretariat (usually abbreviated to WES) in Berlin and the Western Bureau (usually unabbreviated) in Amsterdam. Their heads
Yakov Reich (alias Comrade Thomas) in Berlin, Sebald Rutgers in Amsterdam were personally selected by Lenin in preference to more prominent German and Dutch Communists whom he considered less likely to follow instructions from Moscow. Lenin briefed Reich and
—
Rutgers individually on their clandestine missions, finances, and
initial
contacts.
The Western Bureau under police surveillance.
5
in
On
Amsterdam, however, quickly came
the second day of
its first
secret confer-
ence in February 1920, the Russian delegate, Mikhail Markovich Borodin, in
found the Dutch police recording the proceedings on a Dictaphone
an adjoining apartment.
He rushed into the conference room to shout who arrested all the delegates.
6
a warning, hotly pursued by the police,
Though
the delegates were subsequently released, the British contin-
gent returned
home without
the Comintern funds on which they
had
been counting. 7 In April 1920 the Western Bureau was discontinued.
The
WES
in Berlin
was more
established an elaborate secret network,
successful.
Comrade Thomas
which sent couriers to Moscow
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
68
and elsewhere on diplomatic passports, supplied
false
papers for
Com-
munist militants, and distributed funds to the German and other West
European Communist parties. Since the police paid less attention to women than to men, a number of his couriers were female Party workers, among them the sister of Iosif Stanislavovich Unshlikht, who in April 1921 became Dzerzhinsky's deputy. Thomas demonstrated his technical virtuosity by renting two aircraft and a boat to carry delegates, all supplied with false papers or diplomatic passports, to the
Second Comintern Congress
in Petrograd.
8
The Petrograd Congress adopted "twenty-one
conditions,"
mostly drafted by Lenin, which imposed what amounted to military discipline
on
its
members. All Communist
parties
were required to
operate illegally as well as legally, and "to create a parallel
moment
organization which at the decisive
will help the party to
illegal
do
its
duty to the revolution." 9 Karl Radek, one of the Russian members of the
ECCI,
declared, "Since Russia
is
the only country where the work-
ing class has taken power, the workers of the whole world should 10
Most
now
Communists agreed. Labour Party leaders in Britain fairly described the British Communist Party as "intellectual slaves of Moscow." But it was a servitude freely, even joyously, entered into. One of the more critical British delegates to the become Russian
patriots."
Comintern Congress wrote evident that to
foreign
after his return
from Petrograd:
"It
is fairly
many Communists Russia is not a country to learn from,
but a sacrosanct Holy of Holies to grovel before as a pious
dan faces the Mecca
in his prayers."
Mohamme-
11
Zinoviev told the Comintern Congress that the
ECCI had
not
merely the right but the obligation "to 'meddle' in the work of parties that belong or wish to belong to the
Communist
International."
12
The
principal instruments of such "meddling" were the representatives,
nicknamed "eyes of Moscow,"
Communist the
German
Comintern
sent by the
ECCI
to
member parties and
groups. Paul Levi, the president of the
KPD
and head of
delegation at the Congress, wrote after breaking with the
in 1921:
[These representatives] never work with the leadership of individual
Communist
parties,
but always behind their backs
and against them. They enjoy the confidence of Moscow but the local leaders do not. The Executive Committee [of the Comintern] acts as a Cheka projected outside the Rus.
sian borders.
13
.
.
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
The "eyes of Moscow"
69
on the central committees of the parties to which they were accredited and sent back secret reports, which, according to Comrade Thomas, were seen only by Lenin and the Comintern's 14 Comintern representatives Little Bureau (in effect its Politburo). sat
abroad acted as what the Italian
eminences"
socialist
Giacinto Serrati called "grey
in helping to organize splits in socialist parties,
which
in
1920-21 led to the foundation of new Communist parties in France, Italy,
Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere. The French socialist Andre Le
in 1920 at the socialist congress at Tours that prompted the foundation of the French Communist Party: 'Though I do wish to join the Third International [Comintern], I am not willing to put up with the clandestine surveillance that is going on, surveillance
Troquer complained
even of this congress." 15
The Comintern
emissaries also helped to impose on other
Com-
munist parties the conspiratorial methods practiced by the Bolsheviks in Tsarist Russia.
One of their emissaries' most important functions was from Moscow to Communist parties and the pro-
to transmit funds
Soviet press, often in the form of jewels confiscated from the Tsarist
and bourgeoisie. Exiled grand dukes in Paris and other sometimes claimed (probably mistakenly) to recognize in jewelers' shop windows remnants of the imperial crown jewels. 16 aristocracy
European
capitals
The Finnish Communist Aino Kuusinen, wife of Otto Kuusinen, who in 1921 became the Comintern's secretary-general, later recalled how in the winter of 1920 he financed a secret mission to London by another Finnish Communist, Salme Pekkala: Suddenly Kuusinen produced four large diamonds from his waistcoat pocket and showed them to us
of these
is
worth forty thousand."
which currency
monds money
this referred to.
to Pekkala's wife
and said
I
all,
saying:
"Each
can no longer remember
Then he handed the diawith a smile: "Here's some
for the journey." 17
Another courier used to smuggle Tsarist jewels into Britain was Francis Meynell, a young director of the socialist Daily Herald. Though Meynell was sometimes searched on his return to England, he was never caught. During one "jewel trip" he smuggled two strings of pearls buried in a jar of Danish butter. On another occasion he posted from abroad a large and expensive box of chocolate creams, each containing a pearl or a diamond, to his friend the philosopher Cyril Joad (later star
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
70
of the nell
BBC
to Scotland
Meynell and his "spent a sickly jewels."
Once back in London, MeyYard but searched in vain. Two days later wife recovered the chocolate creams from Joad and hour sucking the chocolates and so retrieving the
radio program Brains Trust).
was taken
18
The
enthusiastic amateurism with
used to finance international revolution
which Tsarist jewels were
led, unsurprisingly, to
serious cases of embezzlement. In 1919 Borodin
was sent with Tsarist
jewels sewn in the lining of two leather suitcases to deliver to nists in the
United
States.
some
Commu-
Probably fearing that he was under surveil-
lance during the journey, he entrusted the suitcases to an Austrian
whom
he met on board
ship.
Though
the Austrian promised to deliver
the bags to Chicago, they never arrived. For a time Borodin himself
came under
suspicion of jewel theft. 19
During the Comintern's action went tionaries
little
first
two years
its
program of covert
beyond instructing and financing non-Russian revolu-
and Bolshevik sympathizers. In March 1921
in
Germany
it
made its first attempt to launch a revolution. The main initiative for the German "March Action" came from Bela Kun, then the most celebrated non-Russian Communist, a veteran of the October Revolution as well as the former leader of the
member
Hungarian Soviet Republic, and a
"The bourgeois governments," Kun believed, "were still weak. Now was the time to hit them, again and again, with a chain of uprisings, strikes and insurrections." Germany, the birthplace of Marxism, was also, he argued, capitalism's most vulnerable point. Lenin was less enthusiastic. His own faith in imminent world revolution was on the wane. After the devastation of the Civil War, he believed that Soviet Russia needed a period of internal of the Comintern's Little Bureau.
Kun
recuperation and detente abroad with her imperialist foes. But
seems to have won Lenin over by arguing that a successful insurrection in
in
Germany would reduce international pressure on the Soviet regime. Early in March Kun and a secret Comintern delegation arrived Berlin to plan the German revolution. Comrade Thomas, the existing
Comintern representative lently,"
in
Germany, was
appalled. "I protested vio-
he later claimed, "and demanded that
Kun
be recalled.
I
sent
them proof that the preconditions for any uprising simply did not exist in Germany. Moscow remained silent." By March 17, however, Kun had won over the KPD leadership. "The workers," it instructed, "are herewith called into battle." Representatives from the French, British,
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
Czech, and other Communist parties were
German
learn from the forthcoming
On March 24th the
KPD
summoned
71
to witness
and
revolution.
21 and 22 strikes and insurrections began.
On
the
ordered a general strike and urged the workers to seize
arms.
The no part
crushed, and the five
German
great majority of the
in the struggle.
By April
labor force, however, took
the few insurgent areas had been
1
KPD called off the general strike.
workers had been
killed,
One hundred fortyan unknown number wounded and 3,470
arrested.
Levi,
Comintern by the tee
who had
German workers
and
its role,
KPD leader in February, blamed the
resigned as
for forcing the
KPD
into attempting a revolution
themselves:
the existence of the
"Thanks
German Communist
Europe's only Communist-led mass party, Brandler, Levi's successor as either the
ECCI
KPD
is
leader,
"or persons close to
bringing about the
to the Executive
"March Action"
it"
in
opposed
Commit-
Party, hitherto
grave danger." Heinrich
denounced the claim that had anything
to
do with
as "the slyest, dirtiest piece of
Comintern president, Zinoviev, was "an infamous lie." But in 1926 the "lie" was officially confirmed. It was finally admitted in Bela Kun's official biography that "In 1921 the Communists sent him on a mission to Germany, where he directed
slander." This allegation, repeated the
the
March Action undertaken by
Though
neither Lenin nor the
accept responsibility for the
the proletariat."
20
Comintern could bring themselves to
March
action,
shed in Soviet policy. The priority
its
now was
failure
marked a water-
not the spread of the
Revolution but the consolidation of the Soviet regime at home. At the
Tenth Party Congress
in
March
1921,
when announcing
"to put an end to opposition, to put the lid on
one-party
Communist
state
it,"
his intention
and
establish a
purged of the remnants of the Mensheviks
and SRs, Lenin admitted: "We have failed to convince the broad masses." Large areas of the Russian countryside were swept by famine, industry was close to collapse, and peasant uprisings continued in the Ukraine and Central Asia.
While the Party Congress was in session, the sailors of the Kronstadt garrison, formerly described by Trotsky as "the beauty and pride" of the Revolution, rebelled against the political repression and economic hardship imposed by the Bolshevik regime. The manifesto of the Kronstadt rebels, "What We Are Fighting For," singled out as one
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
72
of its main targets the Cheka, which
it
likened to the Oprichniki of Ivan
"The power of the police-gendarme monarchy passed into the hands of the Communist usurpers who, instead of bringing freedom to the workers, instilled in them the constant fear of falling into the the Terrible:
torture-chambers of the Cheka, which in their horrors far exceeded the police rule of the Tsarist regime."
spiracy theory predictably
made
21
it
The Cheka's
predilection for con-
quick to detect the long
Western imperialism behind the Kronstadt
rising.
arm of
Dzerzhinsky
re-
ported to Lenin that the rebellion was part of a plot orchestrated by
French agents
in Riga,
working
in collusion
with the SRs, "to carry out
a coup in Petrograd, with the support of the sailors and the discontented working masses,
upon which France intends
into the Baltic." Lenin noted his agreement.
22
to send her fleet
On March
17, just as
the
KPD
was preparing for the "March action" in Germany, the Kronstadt rebellion was brutally suppressed by fifty thousand Red Army troops, including Cheka detachments. Kronstadt hastened, though it did not cause, a major shift in Bolshevik policy. At the Tenth Party Congress Lenin announced the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP). Food requisitioning was stopped, private trading and small-scale private enterprise were restored, and attempts were made to persuade foreign businessmen to provide Russia with their skills and capital. The major priorities of Soviet diplomacy henceforth were to negotiate trade agreements and secure diplomatic recognition from the capitalist world. The beginning of this process was the arrival of a Soviet trade mission in London in May 1920, headed by the commissar for foreign trade, Leonid Krasin,
who began
protracted negotiations for an Anglo-Soviet trade treaty. 23
Krasin's principal assistant and translator was a
Klyshko. The Special Branch reported in
that,
Cheka
officer,
N. K.
immediately on his arrival
England, Klyshko made contact with "Communist elements." 24
A
further sign of the growing priority of foreign intelligence collection
was Dzerzhinsky's decision
to
found a Foreign Department (Inostran-
known as INO) on the Cheka's third anniversary, December 20, 1920. 25 INO's main diplomatic target was Great Britain, regarded by nyi Otdel, better
Soviet leaders as
still
the greatest of the world powers and the key to
Bolshevik Russia's acceptance by the capitalist world. Within
little
more than a year of the signature of the Anglo-Soviet trade agreement in March 1921, Russia negotiated similar accords with Germany, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. At the time of the
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
signature of the Anglo-Soviet agreement, the infant reliable intelligence
on British foreign
INO
still
policy. In a report to
73
had
little
Lenin the
Cheka correctly identified the most influential supporter of the agreement as the prime minister himself, David Lloyd George. The main opposition, it reported, came from "the Conservative Party of Curzon and Churchill, which circles."
based on the Foreign Office and
is
its
surrounding
26
It
did not, however, require secret intelligence to identify Lord
Curzon, the foreign secretary, and Winston Churchill, then colonial secretary, as the net.
When
two most committed anti-Bolsheviks within the
Krasin met the cabinet
Downing
at 10
ning of Anglo-Soviet trade negotiations in
away
May
cabi-
Street at the begin-
1920, Churchill stayed
rather than "shake hands with the hairy baboon."
Curzon
reluc-
when Krasin held out his hand, at Only when the prime minister exclaimed,
tantly attended the reception, but first
declined to accept
it.
"Curzon! Be a gentleman!" did the foreign secretary take Krasin's still-outstretched hand.
27
Apart from identifying Curzon and Churchill
as leading British opposition to the trade treaty, the
Cheka showed only
a crude grasp either of British politics or of the influences on British
March 1921. Churchill was still a coalition Cheka alleged, a Conservative; he crossed the
foreign policy in
Liberal and
not, as the
floor of the
House of Commons only in 1924. The Cheka's main, perhaps to Russia, cited several times in
Ransome, 28
later
only, secret source
its
report,
famous as a children's
on British policy
was the journalist Arthur
novelist, best
known
as the
author of the Swallows and Amazons adventure stories of boating in the
Lake
perpetual
News
Ransome was both a distinguished man of letters and a schoolboy. As wartime correspondent of the (London) Daily
District.
in revolutionary
shrewdness and naivete.
mad
Russia he had displayed a curious blend of
He became
captivated by the "dear good wild
practical impractical credulous suspicious purblind clear-sighted
infernally energetic Bolsheviks," their revolutionary vision of a
Every
man
is
in
some
and
new
full
society:
sort, until his
harden, the potential builder of a
even
if this
blood
is
it is still
thing that
is
of a confused admiration for
youth dies and
New
Jerusalem.
.
his eyes .
.
And
being builded here with tears and
not the golden city that
we
ourselves have dreamed,
a thing to the sympathetic understanding of which
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
74
each one of us youth.
Ransome tually
is
bound by whatever he owes
know many
got to
proceedings with his English
and
own
of the Bolshevik leaders personally, even-
marrying Trotsky's secretary
his
to his
29
after long
first wife.
and embittered divorce
He admired
both Dzerzhinsky
deputy Peters:
[Dzerzhinsky]
is
a calm, cool-headed fanatic for the revolu-
tion with absolute trust in his
ing no higher court.
was remarkable
He
own
has been
conscience and recogniz-
much
where he upon himself
in prison
for his urgent desire to take
unpleasant labour for other criminals such as cleaning
and emptying
slops.
cells
He has a theory of self-sacrifice in which
man has to take on himself the unpleasantness that would otherwise be shared by many. Hence his unwillingness
one
to
occupy
his present position.
Even when confronted by evidence of Cheka sought to justify
its
atrocities,
Ransome
still
existence as the only alternative to chaos. In 1921
he even contrived to defend the suppression of the Kronstadt rebel30
Both the Cheka and SIS were much interested Though some SIS officers regarded him as a Bolshevik lion.
were anxious to exploit
his
in
Ransome.
agent, others
remarkable range of contacts with the
Russian leadership. Tentative SIS approaches to Ransome, however,
came
to nothing.
Ransome's biographer concludes that Ransome and Ransome had
SIS both tried and failed "to exploit the other." 31 If
mentioned
his dealings with
SIS
—and
he was generally anxious to
impress the Bolshevik leadership with his influential British contacts
he would certainly have raised the Cheka's estimate of his importance.
The Cheka may also have known of Ransome's postwar meetings with Sir Basil Thomson, head of both the Special Branch and the postwar Directorate of Intelligence responsible for monitoring
civil
subversion. 32
Ransome moved from Moscow to Riga in Latvia but several years to make regular trips to Russia as corre-
In 1919
continued for
spondent for the Manchester Guardian. His brief and fragmentary diary records meetings during these visits with such senior
Cheka
fig-
ures as Dzerzhinsky's deputies, Peters and Unshlikht. 33 Ransome's
other Cheka contacts included N. K. Klyshko, the Cheka represents-
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
tive
75
with the Soviet delegation that negotiated the Anglo-Soviet trade
agreement. 34
The Cheka (who Paul Dukes as
inaccurately singled out The Times journalist Har-
1922 became foreign editor) and the SIS
old Williams
in
Sir
the
officer
main influences on Curzon's and Churchill's
35 opposition to the Anglo-Soviet trade treaty. This error reflected in
part the Cheka's tendency, in
common
with some other foreign observ-
The Times and the secret service within the Whitehall corridors of power. But the malign influence attributed to Williams and Dukes also probably derived, in part, from Ransome's comments on them. Ransome had quarreled violently ers, to overestimate the influence of both
with Williams, once a close friend, over Williams's hostility to the Bolsheviks. 36
And
he had a similar contempt for Dukes's clandestine
"much the same sort 37 of view of Russia as a hunted fox gets of a fox-hunt." The Cheka also inaccurately described Williams as a baronet. He was, it added, "married to a certain Tyrkova, who is thought to be the daughter of the missions for SIS, which, he maintained, gave him
famous statesman of a conservative-Cadet [Constitutional Democratic Party] tendency."
On
this point
report. Williams's wife, he
Lenin himself corrected the Cheka
wrote to Dzerzhinsky, was not Tyrkova but
Tyrtova ("My wife knew her well personally in
her
own
right,
in
her youth") and was,
"a very prominent Cadet." 38
Ransome's tendency to overstate his own influence and conwas probably responsible for leading the Cheka to
tacts in Whitehall
the inaccurate conclusion that his
visit to
Russia early in 1921 was part
of a special mission entrusted by Lloyd George to himself and a busi-
nessman named Leith to further the cause of a trade agreement. Ransome told the Cheka that "the Soviet Union has a greater influence on the East [than Britain] and that the
Russian influence than
it is
Muslim world is more inclined to The Cheka wrongly concluded
to English."
which England is any serious obstacles" was one of the motives inclining
that "the spread of Soviet influence to the East, to
unable to
England
set
to sign a trade treaty.
Ransome
also told the
reports in the English press of the Kronstadt rebellion to the Bolsheviks in Petrograd
Cheka
that
and opposition
and Moscow were evidence of "orga-
nized pressure on English public opinion" designed to wreck the trade treaty.
The Cheka
reported:
"Ransome
considers that the time might
be opportune for the Soviet Government to publish the true state of affairs."
39
Lenin wrote to Dzerzhinsky after reading the Cheka report: "In
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
76
my
opinion
it is
very important and, probably, fundamentally true." 40
Lenin and the Cheka attached so informed views on British
much importance
Ransome's illpolicy partly because he told them what they to
expected to hear and tended to confirm their existing conspiracy theories.
Ransome had few, commitment
passionate
if
any, British secrets to betray, but he had a
to helping the Bolsheviks gain diplomatic rec-
ognition in the West. After the conclusion of the
fulness to
March
first
step in that
Ransome's usethe Cheka increased. He became the friend and, on occasion,
process, the Anglo-Soviet trade treaty of
1921,
the confidant of the head of the British trade mission, Robert Hodgson,
who must
unaware of his contacts with the Cheka. In May 1923 the trade treaty was threatened by the so-called "Curzon ultimatum," accusing the Soviet government of subversion and hostile propaganda in India and among India's neighbors. Ransome, by his own account, spent many hours discussing the ultimatum with Chicherin, his deputy Litvinov, and, though his memoirs do not mention it, probably the GPU as well. He argued that while Curzon remained implacably hostile to Soviet Russia, the British government as a whole did not want to break off relations. "I have," wrote Ransome, "seldom drunk so much tea in the Kremlin in so short a time." 41 certainly have been
His diary records four meetings with Litvinov, three with Chicherin,
two with Hodgson, and one each with Bukharin and Zinoviev,
all in
the space of four days. 42
Hodgson had
instructions not to discuss the
Curzon ultimatum
with the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs but was persuaded by Ran-
an "accidental" meeting with Litvinov in woods Moscow. 43 Eight months later Ransome at last achieved his ambition of seeing the Soviet Union break out of its diplomatic isolation. He was present at the ceremony in Moscow in January 1924 when, following the election of Britain's first Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald, Hodgson presented an official note to Chicherin for-
some
to agree to
outside
mally recognizing the Soviet regime as the de jure government of
Ransome, "a very happy day for me. 'My war,' more than five years after the Armistice of 1918,
Russia. "It was," wrote
which had
lasted for
During the early 1920s
British intelligence
clearly superior to the Cheka's
on
on Soviet foreign policy was
Britain. Soviet Russia did not yet
possess the sigint that had provided the Tsarist foreign ministry with its
most important diplomatic
intelligence.
During
their first
decade
in
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
77
power the Bolsheviks suffered from two serious sigint handicaps. The first was their fear of relying on the relatively sophisticated codes and ciphers that they had inherited from the Tsarist regime, and their introduction of less secure systems based at first on simple forms of letter transposition. The second was the dispersion of the Tsarist code breakers, who had given prerevolutionary Russia the world lead in cryptanalysis. Worse still, from the Bolshevik point of view, some of the best
had
fled
abroad. 45
The head of the Russian section at Britain's interwar sigint Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS, the
agency, the
ancestor of today's
GCHQ),
from the Tsarist cabinet
noir,
Ernst ("Fetty") Fetterlein, was a refugee
who had
escaped with his wife to Britain
by hiding aboard a Swedish ship, which was unsuccessfully searched before
it
left
Russia. Fetterlein claimed to have been the leading cryp-
tanalyst of Tsarist Russia, with the rank of admiral. His colleagues in
GC & CS found that vital
"on book ciphers and anything where insight was
he was quite the best." 46 The great American cryptographer, Wil-
liam Friedman,
who met
Fetty soon after the end of the war, was struck
by the large ruby ring on the index finger of his right hand:
showed
interest in this
unusual gem, he told
me
that the ring
"When
I
had been
presented to him as a token of recognition and thanks for his cryptanalytic successes while in the service of
Czar Nicholas, the
last
of
the line." Ironically, those successes
lomatic
traffic.
47
had included decrypting
Revolution was to help decrypt Russian diplomatic ish.
British dip-
His main achievement during the decade after the
Though he spoke English with
traffic for
the Brit-
a thick Russian accent, Fetterlein
was a fine linguist. Much of his English, however, had been learned from Sexton Blake and other popular detective novels; he sometimes amused his colleagues in GC & CS with remarks such as "Who has boned my pencil?" or "He was a rotter!" Fetterlein said little about prerevolutionary Russia. Occasionally a fellow cryptanalyst would
draw him out by making
known
to disagree.
very strong
man
"And
a disingenuous
comment with which he was
the Tsar, Mr. Fetterlein,
I
believe he
was a
with good physique?" Fetty usually rose to the bait
and replied indignantly: "The Tsar was a weakling who had no mind of his own, sickly and generally the subject of scorn." 48 Thanks to Fetterlein and his British colleagues, GC & CS was able to decrypt
most high-grade Russian diplomatic
negotiation of the Anglo-Soviet accord.
The
traffic
during the
Soviet intercepts
made
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
78
dramatic reading. Lenin advised Krasin at the outset of negotiations in
June 1920: "That swine Lloyd George has no scruples or shame in the way he deceives. Don't believe a word he says and gull him three times
much." Lloyd George took such insults philosophically. Some of his Curzon and Churchill used the evidence in the intercepts of subsidies to the Daily Herald and British Bolsheviks, and of other forms of Soviet subversion in Britain and India, to demand that the trade delegation be expelled and the trade negotiations abandoned. as
ministers did not.
Though determined not agreement, Lloyd George
felt it
to sacrifice the prospect of a trade
prudent to respond to the outrage with
which most of his ministers reacted Soviet intercepts.
of the
On September
Moscow Communist
August
to the evidence of subversion in the
10 the prime minister accused the head
Party,
Lev Kamenev, who had arrived
to lead the trade delegation with
in
Krasin as his deputy, of "gross
breach of faith" and various forms of subversion. Though Krasin was allowed to remain, Kamenev,
who was due
to return to Russia for
consultation the next day, was told that he would not be permitted to
come
Lloyd George claimed "irrefutable evidence" for
back.
charges but declined to say what
it
was.
The
his
Soviet delegation should,
however, have realized that their telegrams had been decrypted. In August the cabinet had agreed to release a selection of the Soviet intercepts. Eight intercepted messages concerning Soviet subsidies to the Daily
the Herald
itself.
Herald were given
to all national
newspapers except
In order to mislead the Russians into believing that
the messages had leaked from the entourage of
Maxim
Litvinov in
Copenhagen, the press was asked to say that they had been obtained from "a neutral country." The Times, however, failed to play the game. To Lloyd George's fury, The Times began its story with the words:
"The following wireless messages have been intercepted by the British government." Klyshko, the Cheka resident (station chief) with the trade delegation, however, was clearly a novice in sigint. Either he
The Times attentively or he wrongly assumed that, save "Marta" cipher used to transmit the eight published messages, Soviet ciphers were still secure. Nor did he grasp the significance of leaks to the Daily Mail and Morning Post in September based on further failed to read
for the
Soviet intercepts.
The
cipher systems was
extent of British penetration of Soviet code and
realized not by the trade delegation but by Mikhail Frunze, commander-in-chief of the Southern Red Army first
Group, which defeated the forces of the White general, Baron Wrangel, in the Crimea. Frunze reported to Moscow on December 19, 1920:
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
It
me
emerges from a report furnished to
79
Yam-
today by
chenko, former head of the Wrangel radio station at Sevastopol, that absolutely all
the
enemy
in
conclusion all this
is
our ciphers are being deciphered by
consequence of their simplicity. that
all
time been entirely in the
A week later the trade delegation in much
of
its
.
.
The
know about our
military-operational and diplomatic work.
as
.
overall
our enemies, particularly England, have internal,
49
London was
instructed to conduct
correspondence as possible by courier "until the estab-
lishment of new cipher systems." These
and
early in 1921, defeated Fetterlein
new
when introduced
systems,
his British colleagues for several
GC & CS had begun once again amounts of Soviet diplomatic traffic. The celebrated "Curzon ultimatum" of May 1923 denouncing Soviet subvermonths. By the end of April, however, to decrypt substantial
sion, not only
edly
merely quoted a series of Soviet intercepts, but repeat-
—and undiplomatically —taunted the Russians with the successful
interception of their communications:
The Russian Commissariat
for Foreign Affairs will
no doubt
recognize the following communication dated 21st February, 1923,
which they received from M. Raskolnikov.
Commissariat for Foreign Affairs nize a
.
.
The
.
will also doubtless recog-
communication received by them from Kabul, dated November, 1922. Nor will they have forgotten
the 8th
.
.
.
a communication, dated the 16th March, 1923, from
Karakhan, the Assistant Commissary for Foreign
M.
Affairs, to
M. Raskolnikov. In the
summer
of 1923
Moscow
again introduced
new code and
cipher
systems, which for a time defeated Fetterlein and his colleagues. But,
probably by the end of 1924, ing significant
GC & CS succeeded once again in decrypt-
amounts of Soviet diplomatic
Though
Soviet sigint
still
traffic.
50
lagged behind Britain's at the time of
Curzon ultimatum, the INO (foreign intelligence department) network abroad was already larger, more ambitious, and more aggressive than that of SIS, whose budget had been drastically cut back after the end of the First World War. The spread of Soviet trade missions and
the
embassies after the Anglo-Soviet trade agreement of
INO
March
1921 gave
the opportunity to establish a network of "legal residencies"
80
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
headed by "residents"
(station chiefs) operating
within Soviet missions. 51
As
under diplomatic cover
in Britain, the issue of
diplomatic cover
gave
rise to recurrent friction
between diplomats and intelligence
offi-
cers.
SIS station commanders abroad between the wars tended to
live
an underprivileged existence as "passport control fringes of British embassies,
officers"
on the
where they were commonly regarded as an
embarrassment rather than an
asset
by ambassadors, who preferred to
INO residents were commanders, and their intermittent clashes with Soviet ambassadors were correspondingly greater. According to Georgi Agabekov, an OGPU resident who dekeep intelligence
far
arm's length from diplomacy. 52
at
more powerful
figures than SIS station
fected in 1930:
Theoretically the
OGPU
whom
bassador, of
something of the
he
sort.
resident
is
is officially
subordinate to the am-
the second secretary or
But, in fact ... his authority often
exceeds that of the ambassador. Greatly feared by his colleagues, even
by the ambassador, he holds over their heads
the perpetual fear of denunciation. Sometimes the ambassa-
dor
.
.
.
lodges a complaint against the resident in his capacity
secretary. Then you'll see an embassy divided two camps, resident and ambassador each with his own partisans, till Moscow recalls one or the other and his parti-
embassy
as
into
sans will soon follow. 53
The head of the INO, sors, responsible for
until late in 1929
who had become
the foreign section of the
police spies
secretary, Boris
OGPU,
its
succes-
was Mikhail Abramovich
Trilisser, a
Russian Jew
a professional revolutionary in 1901 at the age of only
eighteen. Before the First
down
Cheka and
running the residencies abroad, from August 1921
among
World War he had
the Bolshevik emigres.
Bazhanov, who defected
in
specialized in tracking
Even
Stalin's
one-time
1928 hotly pursued by the
described Trilisser as "a clever and intelligent Chekist." 54 Like
most other senior INO officers of his generation, Trilisser was liquidated during the Terror of the late thirties, only to be posthumously rehabilitated after Stalin's death. His portrait hangs today in a place of
honor
in the
torate of the
For Trilisser
Memory Room KGB.
of INO's successor, the First Chief Direc-
55
his first two years as head of the INO Foreign Section, seems to have delegated most of the day-to-day management
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
81
of the section to his Estonian assistant, Vladimir Andreevich Styrne. Besides being notable for his youth (he was only twenty-two
when he him a
joined the Foreign Section in 1921), Styrne also brought with
blood-curdling reputation for ruthlessness. ble to corroborate, he
own
Though
the story
was believed within the Cheka
to
is
impossi-
have had his
parents liquidated. 56
At about the time when Trilisser took over the INO in 1921, the Comintern set up a secret international liaison department, the OMS (Otdel Mezhdunarodnykh Svyazey), to run its clandestine network of 57 agents abroad. The OMS performed a valuable service for INO by drawing into secret-service work foreign Communists and fellow travelers (Communist sympathizers) who were more likely to respond to an appeal for help from the Communist International than to a direct approach from Soviet intelligence. Many of the best OGPU and NKVD foreign agents in the 1930s believed initially that they were working for the Comintern. 58
OMS
also pioneered the
development of the "front organiza-
become an important instrument of Soviet "active measures" (influence operations). The greatest virtuoso of the front organizations set up with OMS funds was the German Communist deputy Willi Munzenberg, affectionately described by his "life tions" that were later to
partner," Babette Gross, as "the patron saint of the fellow-travellers." 59
During the Russian famine of 1921 Munzenberg Workers' Aid (IWA) with headquarters lished himself as the Comintern's
most
up International and quickly estabpropagandist. Accordset
in Berlin,
effective
ing to Babette Gross:
His magic word was solidarity
—
at the
beginning solidarity
with the starving Russians, then with the proletariat of the
whole world. By substituting
solidarity for charity
berg found the key to the heart of reacted spontaneously.
.
.
.
When
many
Munzen-
intellectuals; they
he spoke of the "sacred
enthusiasm for the proletarian duty to help and assist" he
touched on that almost exalted readiness for
found wherever there
is faith.
sacrifice that is
60
Each act of 'solidarity with the Russian people' forged an emotional bond between the donor and the idealized version of the Soviet workerpeasant state presented by Comintern propaganda.
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
82
IWA
became known in Party slang as the "Miinzenberg Trust." According to Arthur Koestler, who was sent to work for him in 1933, Miinzenberg had acquired "a greater measure of independence and freedom of action in the international field than any other Comin-
The
tern leader.
.
.
.
Undisturbed by the
stifling
control of the party bureauc-
racy," his imaginative propaganda campaigns were "in striking contrast to the pedantic, sectarian
language of the
The Miinzenberg Trust quickly gained
official
Party Press." 61
the support of a galaxy of "un-
committed" writers, academics, and scientists. The portrait of a largeeyed hungry child stretching out a hand for food in Kathe Kollwitz's poster,
produced for Miinzenberg
in 1923,
became one of the most
powerful and best-remembered images of the century. In the course of the 1920s, the Miinzenberg Trust established lishing houses,
away
book
clubs, films,
and
its
own
newspapers, pub-
theatrical productions.
As
far
as Japan, according to Koestler, the Trust controlled directly or
indirectly nineteen
newspapers and magazines. Remarkably, Miinzen-
berg even managed to
The
IWA
make most
of his ventures pay. 62
was the progenitor of a
series of
what Miinzenberg
privately called "Innocents' Clubs," 63 founded to "organize the intellec-
tuals" under covert
voguish causes.
Comintern leadership
He had
geois intellectuals
whom
a friendly
in
support of a variety of
contempt for the "innocent" bour-
he seduced by the lure of spiritual solidarity
Though
his main preoccupation was propaganda, Miinzenberg also used the "Innocents' Clubs" as a cover for OMS
with the proletariat.
intelligence networks,
which included some of the
intellectuals
he had
seduced. 64
At
the operational level there was, inevitably, recurrent friction
between the overlapping networks of OMS and the more powerful INO. At the Center, however, the friction between the two secret agencies was lessened by the personal friendship between Mikhail Trilisser, the
OMS
head of INO, and Iosif Aronovich Pyatnitsky, head of from its foundation in 1921 until he was purged in the mid-thirties. Like Trilisser, Pyatnitsky was Jewish and had begun a career as a professional revolutionary in his late teens. Before the First specialized in smuggling both revolutionaries
World War he had
and revolutionary propaganda in and out of Tsarist Russia. 65 INO was usually the dominant partner in the relationship with OMS. While Trilisser had a seat on OMS, Pyatnitsky had no position in INO. 66 The most ambitious covert action involving both OGPU and Comintern was the final attempt to launch a revolution in Germany.
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
Though approved by
the Politburo, the initiative on this occasion
83
came
from the Comintern. In March 1923 Lenin suffered a third stroke, which ended his active political life. The Comintern's leaders were determined to spread the revolution to
Communism triumphed
at least
one other country before
Germany, they were convinced 67 On August 15 Zinoviev interthat it would sweep across Europe. rupted his summer holiday to instruct the German Communist Party (KPD) to prepare for the coming revolution. 68 On August 23 the Politburo held a secret meeting to hear a report from the Comintern German specialist, Karl Radek. "Here at last, Comrades," said Trotsky, "is the his death. If
we had been
tempest
in
expecting impatiently for so
destined to change the face of the earth.
.
.
.
many
The German
years. It
is
revolution
means the collapse of world capitalism."
Though
less
euphoric than Trotsky, the Politburo decided to
send a secret four-man mission on false papers to Berlin to prepare for the
German
tions of the direct
its
OGPU
revolution.
Radek was
Comintern (decided
to transmit to the
for
it
KPD the instruc-
by the Soviet Politburo) and
Central Committee accordingly. Unshlikht, Dzerzhinsky's
arm the "Red Hundreds" who would carry out the revolution and to set up a German OGPU afterward to stamp out counterrevolution. Vasya Schmidt, the Soviet commissar for labor, who was of German origin, was to organize revolutionary cells within the unions, which in the aftermath of revolution would become German Soviets. Yuri Pyatakov, a member of the Russian Communist Party's Central Committee, was to coordinate the work of the others and be responsible for liaison between Moscow and Berlin.
deputy, was to organize and
69
There was
in reality
revolution in 1923.
The
German support among
never any serious prospect of a
KPD had only a fraction of the
German working class enjoyed by its socialist rival, the SPD, and the German government was far less feeble than Kerensky's provisional the
government
in
October 1917. The Soviet secret mission, however,
re-
mained determinedly optimistic. Pyatakov's reports to Moscow, though contemptuous of the KPD leadership, insisted that the German proletariat was ready for revolution. A special meeting of the Politburo late in September gave the go-ahead. Its conclusions were considered so secret that
its
minutes, instead of being circulated to the Party's
Central Committee, as was usual at this period, were locked in the safe of the Politburo secretary.
According to the plan approved by the Politburo, following
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
84
demonstrations to celebrate the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolu-
Red Hundreds would begin armed conflicts with the The resulting mayhem, and the official repression it was cal-
tion, Unshlikht's
police.
culated to provoke, were expected to lead to a general working-class insurrection, in the course of seize the
which Unshlikht's detachments would
key centers of power, as the Red Guards had done in Petro-
Arms
grad six years before. 70
for the
Red Hundreds were smuggled by
cargo steamer from Petrograd to Hamburg, where they were unloaded
by Communist dockers. 71
The German October
revolution
23. Iosif Pyatnitsky, the
Communist
was due
and Otto Kuusinen, the Com-
Party's Central Committee,
intern's Finnish secretary-general, sat
smoking and drinking
to begin in the early hours of
head of OMS, Dmitri Manuilsky of the
up
all
night in Kuusinen's study,
from them the revolution had begun. Throughout the night a direct telephone line was kept open to Lenin's sickbed at Gorky,
Radek
coffee while they waited for a telegram
in Berlin to tell
where other Soviet leaders were assembled. Lenin himself could mumble only a few syllables, though his mind remained alert for news of the revolution he had predicted five years before.
The news, however, never
came. At dawn on October 23 a telegram was sent to ask Radek what had
happened.
A
few hours
later
came
his
one-word
reply:
"Nothing." At
Radek and the KPD leadership had called off the planned Though a rising went ahead in Hamburg, it was quickly crushed. Bitter recriminations followed. 72 The KPD was heavily criticized in Moscow for having thrown away a "favorable opportunity." 73 The blame more properly the last minute
insurrection because of lack of working-class support.
belonged to
Moscow
for having persuaded
evidence, that the opportunity
had ever
itself,
existed.
in defiance of the
74
Thenceforth the Comintern's main hopes for the spread of revolution
moved from Europe Europe the
to Asia, especially to India
failure of the 1923
and
to China.
Within
"German October" confirmed the shift German "March Ac-
of emphasis that had followed the failure of the
away from sponsoring revolutionary insurrections to and diplomatic relations with the capitalist powers. For some years the Cheka and its successors had greater success against Western diplomatic targets in Moscow than in Western capitals. The trade missions and embassies established in Moscow from 1921 onward tion" in 1921
establishing trade
proved
far easier to penetrate
than the major foreign ministries abroad.
Surveillance of foreign missions
was the
responsibility of the Cheka's
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
85
KRO,
headed for most of the 1920s by Artur Khristyanovich Artuzov. Born in 1891, Artuzov was the son of an Italian-Swiss cheese maker, who had settled in Russia, and the counterintelligence department, the
nephew of M. Labour. 75
He
until 1934.
Kedrov, head of the
S.
later
NKVD
Department of Forced INO from late 1929
succeeded Trilisser as head of
His portrait hangs today
in the
Memory Room
of the First
Chief Directorate, together with a eulogy of his work as head of both
KRO
and INO. 76
The
FCD
classified history of the
He
an ideas man.
praises
Artuzov
chiefly as
pioneered a variety of penetration techniques
"honey trap" to less subtle methods of intimidation later employed by the KGB. Foreign diplomatic couriers were followed from the moment, and sometimes even before, they crossed the Soviet border in the hope of gaining access to against foreign missions, ranging from the
the contents of their diplomatic bags.
When
couriers traveled, as they
Moscow, was added to the train, fitted out as a photographic laboratory, in the hope of gaining access to their diplomatic bags while the couriers were asleep. 77 One courier employed by the Finnish trade delegation in Moscow during 1921 had to resist seduction on the night sleeper by an attractive Cheka female agent anxious to sepa78 Shortly afterward another Finnish courier rate him from his bag. was put to sleep with the help of drugged tea from a train samovar and the contents of his bag photographed in the laboratory carriage the first recorded case of the use of drugs by Soviet intelligence frequently did, on the night sleeper between Petrograd and a special carriage
against a diplomatic target. 79
Unlike INO during the 1920s, KRO had its own laboratory, which ran training courses on the art of opening diplomatic bags, forging official seals, making secret inks and using drugs. 80 Probably the most striking of the KRO's early successes against foreign diplomats was with the Estonian Roman Birk, who fell heavily into debt while playing cards in
Moscow
with a Cheka agent. Birk not only
made
was himself recruited the "Trust" deception, the most
available the contents of his diplomatic bag but
by the Cheka,
later taking part in
successful Soviet intelligence operation of the 1920s. 81
In 1922 the
KRO seems to have devised an even more sinister
plan to deal with Robert Hodgson, the head of the British Trade Delegation.
A
former Tsarist
official
claimed, probably reliably, that
the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs had offered to spy
on the
British mission.
Hodgson reported
him a job
if
he agreed
to the Foreign Office:
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
86
Roller [head of the British section of the that he should entice
drugged and
me
KRO]
proposed
to his house, that I should there be
my pockets searched; it was thought that by this
means valuable information could be secured.
My
acquain-
tance urged the obvious objections to this genial suggestion;
motor car would be standing outside the house, my prolonged absence would be made from the Mission and complications must ensue which could
the Mission
inquiries as to
hardly be agreeable to the Soviet government.
Artuzov agreed and the plan was dropped. 82
The commonest
Moscow were
KRO
operations against foreign missions in
the intimidation of their Russian employees and other
contacts. In
May
eign affairs,
who he
1924 Hodgson sent Litvinov, the commissar for forcorrectly believed disapproved of at least
some
OGPU excesses, two "perfectly friendly" letters giving examples of the harassment of his mission over the previous two years. Several of the cases concerned an
OGPU
officer
using the
name Anatoli Vladimiro-
vich Jurgens, who, said Hodgson, "appears to have specialized in terrorizing
women and young girls."
of the maids at the trade mission to jail her for
life
Early in 1922 Jurgens
summoned one
named Theresa Koch and threatened
unless she signed a
document agreeing
to spy
on the
mission and report to the Cheka once a week:
,
Finally, being completely terrorized, she signed.
She was
threatened with condign punishment should she reveal the
For months afterwards she did not dare when she wished to leave the country, permission was systematically refused, the reason being that she had been connected with some incident at Ekaterinoslav where she has never been in her life. incident to me.
.
.
.
to leave the Mission premises. Later,
—
Early in 1923 Jurgens tried similar pressure on an old
woman named
Maria Nikolayevna Schmegman, who had become acquainted with
Hodgson through
selling antique furniture to
him. Jurgens told her that
she would never leave the Lubyanka alive unless she signed an agree-
ment
to steal
documents from Hodgson and spy on
his embassy.
Finally, she signed the undertaking. For a considerable time afterwards she was persecuted by Jurgens. She was also
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
threatened with the severest punishment
if
87
she spoke of the
matter to anyone. Early in 1924 the girlfriend of a trade-mission employee, Tatiana
Romanovna
Levitskaya, was also asked to spy on the mission.
When
Narim
region
she refused, she was sentenced to three years' exile in the as a British spy.
83
"In comparison with other missions," Hodgson told the Foreign Office, the British mission
was "treated with
relative decency."
After protests by the Polish legation at harassment by the
OGPU,
it
received a formal apology from the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs.
84
Unlike the Poles, Hodgson received no formal apology. But he reported in
as
August 1924 it
OGPU intimidation had ceased (only temporarily,
that
turned out) since his protest in May: "M. Chicherin has
later
obviously taken the matter
much
to heart,
and
is
extremely anxious
that repetition of such obnoxious episodes should be avoided in the
future."
85 *
The Cheka and
its successors frequently found it easier European diplomatic missions outside Europe than
penetrate
Europe
itself.
to in
In the early 1920s the mistress of the British consul at
Cheka officer named Apresov with the conOn moving to become OGPU resident at Meshed
Resht, Persia, supplied a sul's secret papers.
in 1923,
Apresov also obtained from the British consulate copies of
the consul's reports to the British embassy in Teheran as well as cor-
respondence between the military attache
command
in India.
in
Teheran and the high
86
The non-European capital in which European missions were most vulnerable to Soviet penetration in the pre-Stalin era was probably Beijing (Peking).
A
police raid
April 1927 recovered copies of a
on the Soviet Embassy
number of highly
in Beijing in
secret British diplo-
matic documents. They included, according to a Foreign Office minute,
"probably the two most important despatches" written by the British
ambassador, Sir Miles Lampson, over the previous few months. Lampson himself claimed that "leakage" from the Italian and Japanese legations
had been even more
serious:
Documents obtained from of decyphers of
all
Italian [Legation] consist
mainly
important telegrams between Peking and
Rome and vice versa, and those from Japanese [Legation] are comprehensive and even include such details as seating ar-
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
88
rangements
and record of conversations
at official dinners
held between
of Legation and visitors thereto.
officials
Lampson reported that both the head chancery servant and another member of the Chinese staff at the British legation had been discovered to be
working for the Russians. 87 The Foreign Office
lessons of the legation leaks.
failed to learn the
Throughout the interwar years
it
possessed
not merely no security department but not a single security
officer.
Security at British missions continued to be inadequate, sometimes
outrageously
so.
Leaks of documents from the
Rome
embassy, involv-
ing at least one local employee, began in 1924 and continued until the
Second World War. 88
Though most Soviet espionage against foreign missions in Beiwas organized by military intelligence rather than by the OGPU, the documents seized during the raid on the Soviet embassy provide a
jing
some of the methods used by both
revealing insight into agencies.
Chinese lies,
One
intelligence
of instructions for the recruitment of "lower grade"
set
staff in foreign legations ("office boys,
etc.") suggested:
watchmen, house coo-
"Very suitable recruiting agents may prove
those [Communist] Party workers
who
[to be]
are sufficiently trained to carry
out the enlisting of secret agents on the basis of idealistic considerations."
The agents
recruited were to collect torn-up
documents from
embassy wastepaper baskets, "spoiled typewritten sheets, first proof sheets from all kinds of duplication machines, etc." Special attention should be paid to the stencils used in duplicating machines:
The agents who
steal material
of this kind should be encour-
aged with pecuniary rewards. These rewards, however, must be small for two reasons: a.
A
amount of money
large
in the
hands of agents may
arouse suspicion in other Chinese servants of the office in question
and through them become known to
their
masters. b.
On no
account should the agent have any chance to
suspect that he
which
is
as soon as
with
us.
him
that
On we
supplying us with valuable material for
an opportunity occurs he
the contrary,
we must always
are waiting for something
from him, and
if
we pay him
extra
it is
may
bargain
point out to
more important only because
we
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
hope he
be more successful in future. Hence
will
clear that the salary of such agents
more than the
little
salary
89
it is
must be only very
which they are getting from
their masters.
For good work by the secret agents, the recruiting agents must be given rewards as they are, properly speaking, the moving power behind this work. Secret agents should be instructed to
outward devotion and attachment" their to be
show
"industry, punctuality
to their masters,
and
and generally do
utmost to avoid suspicion. Those handling them needed "always
on guard against
false
information" and alive to the possibility
that an agent might be discovered by his legation
and used
to supply
bogus information. 89
The documents stolen from foreign diplomatic missions, when compared with the ciphered versions, were of great assistance to Soviet code breakers.
was
On
stolen as well.
occasion, as in the Tsarist period, cipher material
90
By
the mid-twenties sigint
was once again emerging Within the
as an important source of Russian diplomatic intelligence.
OGPU
sigint
was the
responsibility of a Special Section (Spets Otdel)
headed by Gleb Ivanovich Boky. The Special Section was already functioning within the to
Cheka
in 1921
but
its
functions at that stage seem
have been rather assorted and largely concerned with labor camps.
Gradually, however, in 1879, the
it
came
to specialize in sigint. Its head,
Boky, born
son of a Ukrainian schoolteacher and an old Bolshevik, had
an exemplary revolutionary record, which included twelve
spells in
two Siberian exiles, and participation in the revolutions of 1905 and October 1917. He headed the Special Department for sixteen years, from 1921 until he was purged in 1937 during the Stalinist
Tsarist
jails,
91
By the mid-twenties the Special Section had succeeded in bugging some Moscow embassies as well as breaking their codes. Boky terror.
was believed
to
have given Chicherin a dramatic demonstration of his
by inviting him to listen to a live relay of Afghan ambassador in Moscow making love to an opera singer who was also employed as an OGPU "swallow." 92 In March 1921, when Soviet Russia began to emerge from diplomatic isolation after the Anglo-Soviet Trade Treaty, her diplomatic intelligence had been feeble. The infant INO's only intelligence on the foreign policy of the "Main Adversary," Great Britain, derived
section's technical virtuosity
the
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
90
from the misleading analysis of Arthur Ransome. By the time of Dzerzhinsky's death in July 1926, the situation had been transformed. Soviet sigint,
though not yet
Moscow and mint
elsewhere gave Russia probably the best diplomatic hu-
Moscow, by
in the world.
environment
was once again a major source The penetration of Western embassies in
in the Tsarist class,
of diplomatic intelligence.
for
most Western
At no point between
contrast,
had become too
the wars did SIS even possess a
Like most other Western intelligence services, success to penetrate Russia from across
its
it
an
hostile
intelligence services to operate in at
Moscow
all.
station.
sought with decreasing
frontiers, chiefly
from Fin-
land and the Baltic States. 93 Britain's lack of diplomatic humint, however,
mid-twenties by
was
continuing superiority in sigint and by
its
offset in the its
access to
Comintern communications. High-grade Tsarist diplomatic ciphers, least
defeated
94
foreign cryptanalysts. Soviet diplomatic
all
by contrast, remained vulnerable for a decade
ciphers, tion.
at
during the generation before the First World War, seem to have
The Comintern
Western embassies
in
aware that "many of governments." 95
and
intelligence
after the
Revolu-
period was probably at least as porous as Moscow. The Comintern leadership was well
at this
its
MI5 and
secrets
were penetrated by agents of foreign
the Special Branch in
London and
the Intelli-
gence Bureau of the British Raj in Delhi successfully intercepted a
stream of Comintern communications to and from British and Indian
Communists. Indian Communists now use these intercepts as an important source for their to cover it
up
its
own
own
history.
96
The Comintern sometimes sought
security lapses for fear that
OGPU would insist that
be more closely supervised. 97
Documents were not found to be missing.
the only Comintern property that were
Vasili Kolarov, the Bulgarian representative
ECCI, once went by night
sleeper to represent the
military celebration at Minsk.
When
on the
Comintern
at a
he awoke, his clothes as well as
had been stolen. Peeping out of the window he saw a welcoming party of officers standing stiffly to attention while a military band struck up martial music. Tension mounted as the band continued his briefcase
to play
and Kolarov
failed to appear. Eventually his
predicament was
discovered and he was smuggled off the train in borrowed overcoat and boots.
The
Togliatti
on the ECCI, Palmiro Togliatti, alias Aino Kuusinen later recalled calling on
Italian representative
Ercoli, suffered a similar fate.
and
his wife in their
Moscow
hotel:
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
I
knocked
not open
at the door. Togliatti
it
as he
answered, but said he could
had nothing on. All
their things
had been
Evidently the thieves had climbed
stolen during the night in
91
by way of the balcony and the open window as the occu-
pants of the
room
lay fast asleep.
Rather more serious was the
98
fact that
Comintern funds intended
for
foreign Communists continued to be embezzled by corrupt couriers or Communist officials. The leading Indian Communist, M. N. Roy, lived in some style in Paris and traveled freely, apparently on misappropriated Comintern funds, while other Indian Communists complained of large sums that, as they euphemistically put it, had gone "astray."
In order to account for his misappropriated funds,
occasion presented the Comintern with a
list
Roy on
at least
one
of nonexistent Indian
Communists whom he had subsidized." The Comintern suffered a particular embarrassment during the British general strike in 1926. Allan Wallenius, the English-speaking
Comintern ers of the
librarian,
London
was given £30,000
dockers.
He
set
to deliver to
Communist
lead-
out for Stockholm with a forged
Swedish passport, boarded a British ship bound for England, and made friends with a stoker
who
explained that as well as being a good
munist himself he knew personally the Communists to
money was
to be delivered.
On
his return,
Kuusinen that the stoker had agreed Kuusinen's wife
Com-
whom
the
Wallenius explained to Otto
to deliver the
money
himself.
later recalled the sequel:
"What was the stoker's name?" asked Otto drily. "He told me his name, but I've forgotten it." Speechless with fury, Otto pointed to the door. Needless to say, the
money never
got to
its
destination.
100
Western governments found, however, that profiting from the Comin-
was attended by a number of pitfalls. Genuine intercepted Comintern communications were an intelligence source sometimes muddied by forged documents. White Russian forgers in Berlin, Reval, and Warsaw were constantly producing forged Soviet and Comintern documents of varying plausibility as a means both of earning money and of discrediting the Bolsheviks. From time to time Western governments and intelligence services were taken in. In September 1921 the Foreign Office suffered the extreme embarrasstern's regular lapses of security
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
92
ment of citing in an official protest note to Moscow a series of Soviet and Comintern documents which it later discovered to have been forged in Berlin. Sir
Wyndham
Childs, assistant commissioner in charge of the
Branch from 1921
Special
to 1928,
found the forgers "an intolerable
nuisance," for "they gave the Russians an opportunity to shout
when a genuine document was being dealt with." 101 The charge that genuine intercepted documents were
gery'
'for-
in fact all
became one of the most successful forms of OGPU and Comintern disinformation. The most celebrated example of such disin-
forgeries rapidly
formation concerns the so-called "Zinoviev letter" dated September 1924, intercepted by SIS
and published
15,
during the general
in the press
campaign of October 1924. This document, which instructed British Communists to put pressure on their Labour sympathizers, intensify "agitation-propaganda work in the armed forces" and generelection
ally
prepare for the coming of the British revolution, was widely
though wrongly
—believed
time to have
at the
won
the election for the
Labour government. The original of the Zinoviev letter has since disappeared, and it is now impossible to be certain whether it was genuine or not. There was no shortage of forged Comintern documents on offer, but there was no shortage either of genuine Comintern intercepts. The incoming Conservative government claimed substantial corroboration for the Zinoviev letter from other intelligence sources, which are now known Conservatives and ended the
to
have included a "trusted"
who
of Britain's
life
MI5
first
agent at the British
Communist Party
on other Comintern communications. 102 The British Communist Party was formally rebuked by the Comintern at the end of 1924 for its carelessness
headquarters
in
regularly provided reliable intelligence
handling secret documents. 103
Zinoviev letter was genuine or,
Two
contained were sufficiently close to
munication for the
MI5
possibilities remain. Either the
was forged, the instructions it those in a genuine Comintern com-
if it
agent to confuse the two. 104
Whether or not the Comintern was right to claim that the Zinoviev letter was a forgery, there is no doubt that it built upon that claim a successful campaign of disinformation designed to demonstrate that
it
reality
never sent instructions to it
Moscow sent
sent quite regularly. visit in
member parties of a kind which in The centerpiece of its campaign was a
November 1924 by
from London
a naive three-man
TUC delegation
Comintern files in order to establish the truth about the Zinoviev letter. Aino Kuusinen later described the "three days and nights of feverish activity" necessary to remove secret to inspect
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
93
Communists and other "compromising documents" from the Comintern archives before the delegates arrived. Even the register of daily correspondence was entirely rewritten in a sanitized instructions to British
form: result was that the trio were completely misled and the Comintern was absolved of any subversive and secret activities in England. After the delegation had left, there was
The
general relief and everyone had a good laugh over the fact that they
had been able
to pull the
wool so
easily over the
Englishmen's eyes. 105
One
of the results of the Zinoviev letter affair was that the secret
of the Comintern's the
OGPU
OMS
and, on
was thenceforth subject
work
to
increased the
monitor
its
by
military matters, by Soviet military intelligence
(then the Fourth Bureau of the General Staff, later the
OGPU
work
to greater control
number of
its
secret work.
improve the security of
agents within the
OMS
net-
simultaneously took steps to
communications. In 1925 Abramov, Pyat-
its
nitsky's chief assistant in
own
OMS
GRU). 106 The
OMS,
founded a secret school
Moscow
in the
suburb of Mytishchi to train foreign Comintern radio operators to
communicate with
OMS
by coded radio messages. After Wallenius's
bungled attempt to send funds to Communist dockers during the British general strike of 1926, a nist
more
merchant seamen was
intelligence,
reliable courier
system using
Commu-
up under the supervision of military with the help of Edo Fimmen, head of the Hamburg Seaset
men and Transport Workers' Union. The chosen was tested
in a series
reliability
of the couriers
dummy
packages before
of trial runs with
they were used in earnest. 107
Despite the growing success of Soviet espionage during the 1920s,
main
target
remained not
capitalist
governments but, as
at the
its
founda-
end of the Civil War the had been located on Russian soil. of the White armies in November 1920,
tion of the Cheka, counterrevolution. Until the
chief counterrevolutionary threat
With the evacuation of the last the main bases of counterrevolution moved abroad. On December
1,
1920, Lenin instructed Dzerzhinsky to devise a plan to neutralize these
Four days later Dzerzhinsky proposed a multipronged attack: more hostage taking from among the families in Russia of prominent
bases.
emigres, special detachments to attack emigre leaders in their foreign
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
94
and an expansion of the deception techniques using agents 108 "For the detection provocateurs that had defeated the Lockhart plot. of foreign agencies on our territories," Dzerzhinsky proposed to "orga109 The threat to the Bolnize pretended White Guard associations." shevik regime from the White Guards after their defeat in the Civil War was always slight, but in Lenin's mind it assumed enormous propor-
bases,
tions.
He
Comintern Congress
told the Third
Now,
after
in July 1921:
we have repulsed the attack of international coun-
terrevolution, there has been
formed abroad an organization
of the Russian bourgeoisie and of all the Russian counterrevolutionary parties. scattered through
The number of Russian all
emigres,
who
are
foreign countries, might be counted at
from one and a half to two million. We can observe them all working jointly abroad irrespective of their former politi.
cal parties.
.
.
They
.
.
.
are skillfully taking advantage of every
opportunity in order, in one form or another, to attack Soviet
Russia and smash her to pieces. ... In certain respects
must learn from
this
we
enemy. These counterrevolutionary
emigres are very well informed, excellently organized, and
good
strategists.
army
learns
ity
There is an old proverb that a beaten much. They are learning with the greatest avid.
.
.
and have achieved great successes.
Lenin appealed to "our foreign comrades" to keep the White Guards under surveillance. 110
in their countries
The
KGB
still
numbers among
its
greatest past triumphs the
deception operations against the White Guards after the Civil War.
—code-named Sindikat and Trest (Trust)—
figure
prominently in the training courses on "active measures" at the
FCD
Two
such operations
Andropov
Institute.
111
man believed to be the most White Guards: Boris Savinkov, former Socialist Revolutionary terrorist and deputy minister of war to Kerensky. DurSindikat was targeted against the
dangerous of
all
the
War of 1920 Savinkov had headed the antiBolshevik Russian Political Committee (RPC) in Warsaw and was ing the Russo-Polish
Army, which Red Army. In January 1921 the RPC a new organization
largely responsible for recruiting the Russian People's
fought under Polish
command
against the
Savinkov formed from the remnants of
dedicated to the overthrow of the Bolsheviks: the People's Union for
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
95
Defense of Country and Freedom (NSZRiS), which ran an agent net-
work
in Soviet
Russia to collect intelligence and prepare for risings
against the regime. 112 According to the Soviet version of events, "nearly all
Savinkov's agents were simultaneously on Poland's payroll, with the
them across the border." 113 Despite Polish assistance and smaller subsidies from the French, British, and Czechs, Savinkov hovered on the brink of bankruptcy. The SIS station chief in Warsaw reported to "Head Office" in June 1921: "The position is becoming desperate. The balance in hand today amounts to 700,000 Polish police helping to put
Polish Marks, not even sufficient to pay [Savinkov's] staff their salaries for the
month of
July."
114
Savinkov's most serious problem, though he did not realize
was not
December ceived a
1920, just as Savinkov
visit in
it,
Western funds, but Soviet penetration. In
his shortage of
was organizing the NSZRiS, he
Poland from the deputy chief of
staff
re-
of the Soviet
Gomel, Aleksandr Eduardovich Opperput, an anti-Bolshevik underground and brought
Internal Service Troops in
who claimed
to belong to
with him a suitcaseful of fabricated secret documents. Opperput's real
name was
Pavel Ivanovich Selyaninov and he was to prove himself one
of the Cheka's most successful agents provocateurs. 115 His unusual
name should
have aroused some suspicion at a time when the was introducing so many abbreviations into the Russian language. "Opperput" looks suspiciously like an abbreviated combination of Operatsiya (Operation) and Putat' (Confuse): "Operation Confuse." Neither Savinkov nor the Western intelligence services with whom Opperput came into contact grasped the significance of his name, and he continued to confuse both for a number of years. Savinkov itself
Soviet regime
recruited
Opperput as one of
him Most forty-four were given a show trial preserve his cover, it was reported that his chief lieutenants, thus enabling
members of were rounded up by the Cheka and to identify the leading
the
NSZRiS on
Soviet
soil.
August 1921. In order to Opperput himself had been arrested. 116 in
The official
intelligence supplied
by Opperput provided the basis for an
Soviet protest to the Polish government against Savinkov's at-
Warsaw base. In October establish a new base first in
tempts to provoke anti-Soviet risings from his 1921, at Polish insistence, Savinkov
Prague, then in Paris. 117 Sindikat-2,
now
left
The second
to
stage of the
Cheka
operation,
began, designed to disrupt what remained of Savin-
kov's organization in both Russia and the West, and finally to lure
Savinkov himself back to a show
trial in
Moscow. The operation was
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
96
simplified
by Savinkov's increasingly unstable hold on
reality.
Late in
1921 he visited England, renewed his acquaintance with Winston Churchill, and began a high-level round of visited the
visits.
Russian trade delegation in London.
visit that its
Remarkably, he even
He
claimed after his
head, Krasin, deeply impressed by his vision of a post-
Bolshevik Russia, had suggested that he join the Soviet government. Sir
Mansfield
Cumming,
on
chief of SIS, told the Foreign Office, probably
the basis of Krasin's intercepted telegrams, not to trust Savinkov's
account: he had in reality "met with a far from favorable reception" by the trade delegation. Shortly before the Christmas holidays Churchill
motored down to Chequers with Savinkov to see the prime minister. They found Lloyd George surrounded by Free Church ministers and a Welsh choir, who sang hymns in Welsh for several hours. When the hymns were over, Savinkov tried and failed to win Lloyd George over to his visionary schemes. Savinkov, however, later gave a quite different
version of the meeting, in which the hymns sung by the Welsh choir became transformed into a rendering of "God Save the Tsar" by Lloyd George and his family. 118
Though
increasingly a fantasist, Savinkov remained a charis-
matic figure for his dwindling band of followers. Even Churchill
re-
"When all is said and done," he wrote, "and with all the stains and tarnishes there be, few men tried more, gave
tained
some admiration
for him.
more, dared more and suffered more for the Russian people." 119 In the
summer officer,
of 1922 Savinkov's aide, L. D. Sheshenya, a former Tsarist
was captured by Soviet border guards
Polish frontier.
On GPU
emigre supporters
in
instructions,
as he crossed the Russo-
Sheshenya wrote to Savinkov's
Poland reporting that he had made contact
Russia with a well-urganized anti-Bolshevik underground.
A
in
senior
KRO officer, A.
P. Fyodorov, then paid several visits to Poland posing Mukhin, one of the leaders of the imaginary Moscow underground, and persuaded the head of the Savinkov organization in Vilno, Ivan Fomichov, to return with him to Russia. In Moscow Fomichov
as A. P.
held talks with a group of
GPU
agents provocateurs posing as leaders
of the underground, and agreed to ask Savinkov to assume leadership of their group. 120 In July 1923 "Mukhin" met Savinkov in Paris. The Moscow underground, he told him, was deeply divided over tactics and desperately needed his experienced leadership. Instead of going to Moscow himself, however, Savinkov sent his aide, Colonel Sergei Pavlovsky. his arrival in
Moscow
in
On
September, Pavlovsky was arrested and, ac-
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
KGB's
cording to the
sanitized account of the case, after being initially
"very aggressive," "he too agreed to help and the
GPU
a role to play." Pavlovsky's part in the deception
was
Moscow
too.
of messages urging Savinkov to
Savinkov
97
come
to
to send a series 121
In July 1924
decided to return to Russia, and
at last fell for the bait,
come
telegraphed to his old friend and collaborator Sidney Reilly to
New York and help him plan his secret mission On August 15, after three weeks' discussion with
over from
homeland.
Savinkov crossed the Russian border with some
walked straight into an
OGPU
trap.
ance rapidly collapsed. At a show
him
assigned
122
trial
to his Reilly,
of his supporters and
Under interrogation his resiston August 27 Savinkov made
a full confession:
I
unconditionally recognize Soviet power and none other.
To
every Russian
who
loves his country
I,
who have
tra-
versed the entire road of this bloody, heavy struggle against you,
I
who
you as none other
refuted
down
did,
I tell
him
that
if
you love your people, you will bow worker-peasant power and recognize it without
you are a Russian, to
if
any reservations. In return for his recantation Savinkov escaped the death sentence and
was given ten years
in prison.
According
to the official
KGB
version
of events, he threw himself to his death from an unbarred prison win-
dow
May
in
1925.
123
In reality, as the current
aware, Savinkov was pushed to his death
byanka. The
number of
site
was
KGB
KGB
down
leadership
several times pointed out to Gordievsky
veterans. All
well
is
a stairwell in the Lu-
by a
were convinced Savinkov had been
pushed.
Even more of a fictitious
was the Cheka's invention monarchist underground, the Monarchist Association of
Central Russia
which
(MOR),
for six years
modern
tions in
successful than Sindikat
better
known by
was one of the
intelligence history.
its
classic
The
cover
name
Trest (Trust),
peacetime deception opera-
Trust's chief targets were
two
of the principal White Russian emigre groups: the Supreme Monarchist
(VMS) based in Berlin, and the Russian Combined Services Union (ROVS), headed by General Aleksandr Kutepov in Paris. The existence of the nonexistent MOR was first revealed in the late autumn of 1921 to the VMS delegate in Reval, Yuri Artamonov, by a KRO Council
officer,
Aleksandr Yakushev,
who
claimed to be a secret
member
of the
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
98
Trust able to travel abroad as a Soviet trade representative. Through
Artamonov the KRO was able to make contact with the VMS. In 1922 Artamonov moved to Warsaw, where he became the ROVS representative and provided a channel of communication with General Kutepov in Paris. Over the next few years Yakushev and other Trust representatives supplied by the KRO paid a series of visits to Germany, France, White Russian emigre Yakushev was accompanied by General Nikolai Potapov, a former Tsarist officer who had sided with the Bol-
and Poland, expanding communities. On some
their contacts with the trips
sheviks soon after the Revolution but
of staff in the
MOR.
now
claimed to be military chief
124
The main role in winning the confidence of General Kutepov, who was more alert than most White Guards to the possibility of Soviet deception, was played by Maria Zakharchenko-Schultz, the widow of two Tsarist officers. After her first husband's death in the Great War Maria left her baby with friends and joined the army at the front as a volunteer. Her second husband was killed fighting in the Civil War, after which Maria retreated with White forces into Yugoslavia. In 1923 she joined Kutepov's organization, was given the code name Niece and traveled to Russia to
make
contact with the Trust. Pepita Reilly, last
wife of the celebrated British agent, described Zakharchenko-Schultz as "a slender
woman
with plain yet attractive, capable face, steady,
honest, blue eyes, obviously well-bred, and answering very well to
Sidney's description of her as a school ma'rm." Zakharchenko-Schultz
contributed so effectively to the Trust's success that she has inevitably
been accused of being a conscious agent of operation taught at the
FCD
Andropov
125
it.
Institute,
The
version of the
however, portrays
her, probably correctly, as an unconscious agent cleverly manipulated by Aleksandr Opperput, who seduced her during her visit to Moscow and continued an affair with her over the next few years. 126 Zakharchenko-Schultz's mixture of passion and naivete, combined with her ability to
win the confidence of both Kutepov and
Reilly,
made
her one
of the Trust's most important assets.
the
The Trust provided the KRO with a means both of penetrating main White Guard emigre groups and of flushing out their remain-
ing sympathizers in Russia
itself. It
also deceived in varying degrees the
intelligence services of Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, Britain,
France.
KRO,
Roman
Birk, the Estonian trade official blackmailed
and
by the
acted as one of the couriers between the White Guards and the
nonexistent
MOR.
Polish diplomats allowed
MOR messages to be sent
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
in their diplomatic bags.
127
The passage of Trust
99
representatives across
the Russian frontier was supposedly facilitated by an NCO in the Soviet border guards, Toivo V'aha, who, though in the pay of Finnish military 128 According to a Soviet intelligence, was in reality working for KRO.
no fewer than eight members of the Trust received
official history,
rewards of various kinds from the Western intelligence services they
had deceived. 129 There
is
some corroboration
for this claim: at least
Trust agent appears to have received a gold watch from Polish gence.
130
The
Trust's most spectacular
believed by the since his
coup was
its
success in luring to
"master spy" Sidney Reilly, wrongly
his destruction the alleged British
KRO to be its most dangerous foreign
Moscow
tion of Russia"
from the Bolsheviks as "a most sacred duty." "I also
end of the war, "that the devote the rest of still
talent
my
more the Foreign
and fondness
state
wicked
should not lose
life
to this kind of
Office,
my
Cumming, services.
I
at the
would
work." But Cumming,
had become wary of
Reilly's erratic
for bizarre operations, such as the attempted re-
moval of Lenin's and Trotsky's
Cumming's peacetime SIS.
opponent. Ever
adventures in 1918, Reilly had regarded the "salva-
venture to think," he told the SIS chief, Sir Mansfield
and
one
intelli-
staff
trousers.
He was
refused a job on
and retained only a loose connection with
131
For several years
after the
war
Reilly plunged into a variety of
business ventures on both sides of the Atlantic, ranging from Czech
radium exports
to
an allegedly miraculous new medicine named
"Humagsolan," none of which made him the fortune he had expected. Simultaneously he pursued a series of sometimes fantastic schemes to bring down the Bolsheviks. His chief confederate in the early 1920s was Boris Savinkov. It was Reilly who in 1922 brought Savinkov to Britain, in defiance of instructions from both Cumming and the Foreign Office, for the round of visits that ended with his bizarre encounter with Lloyd George at Chequers. Reilly's hold on reality became increasingly uncertain. According to one of his secretaries, Eleanor Toye, "Reilly used to suffer from severe mental crises amounting to delusion. Once he thought he was Jesus Christ." 132 Soviet intelligence, however, interpreted Reilly's eccentric schemes to overthrow the Bolshevik regime as evidence not of his declining hold on reality but of an elaborate conspiracy by SIS approved at the highest level within Whitehall. By 1924 it had become a major priority of the Trust operation to neutralize Reilly by luring him across the Russian frontier. Even today Reilly still retains
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
100
KGB
within the
his
undeserved reputation as a British master spy.
The OGPU's plans
were unwittingly assisted
to capture Reilly
Commander Ernest Boyce, who had been
SIS station chief
by
his friend
in
Russia during Reilly's 1918 adventures. Boyce had been deeply
impressed by Reilly's
flair
and bravado.
Politically naive himself,
failed to grasp the impracticality of Reilly's
Bolsheviks. In 1919 Boyce
main base
became SIS
he
schemes to overthrow the
station chief in Helsinki, the
for British intelligence operations against Russia.
His enthu-
siasm for the Trust rivaled his admiration for Reilly. Even after Savinkov's
show
trial in
August 1924, Boyce remained convinced that the
Trust was growing in strength and even had secret supporters within the Soviet government. Despite instructions from the SIS head office
him
not to become involved in Reilly's schemes, Boyce wrote to
in
January 1925 asking him to meet representatives of the Trust in Paris. Reilly, then in
New York with
ing about him, replied in in
"a hellish state ...
and prospects of
I
his
March am,
real action,
at
American business ventures
collaps-
that though his personal affairs were
any moment,
if I
see the right people
prepared to chuck everything else and
devote myself entirely to the Syndicate's [Trust's] interests." 133 After a
number of
delays caused by Reilly's "hellish" debt-
ridden business dealings, he arrived in Paris on September
had
talks with
Boyce and General Kutepov, and decided
3,
where he
to proceed to
Finland to meet representatives of the Trust. Kutepov, however, tried to discourage Reilly
from
visiting
Russia
itself.
while, sought to provide additional evidence of
gling out of Russia Boris
134
The
Trust,
its reliability
mean-
by smug-
Bunakov, the brother of Boyce's "head agent,"
Nikolai Bunakov. Another Trust courier subsequently brought out
much attached. Even then, Boyce nor Reilly smelled a rat. Reilly arrived in Helsinki on September 21, then traveled with Nikolai Bunakov and Maria ZakharBoris Bunakov's violin, to which he was neither
chenko-Schultz to Viborg for a meeting with the Trust's chief representative, Yakushev. Reilly had originally intended to go no further than Viborg. Yakushev, however, successfully appealed to Reilly's van-
and delusions of grandeur, persuading him that it was vital for him to meet the Trust leadership in Russia. Reilly was assured that he would be back in Finland in time to catch a boat leaving Stettin on Septemity
ber 30. 135
He
kov with a
left
for the Russian border with
letter for his wife, Pepita,
case of a mischance befalling me."
Yakushev, leaving Buna-
"only for the most improbable
Even if "the Bolshies" were to it was inconceivable that they
question him, Reilly assured his wife,
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
would in
realize his true identity: "If
Russia
new
it
I
should be arrested
could be only on some minor, insignificant charge and
friends are powerful
was due
Reilly
He
ber 28-29.
by any chance
101
to
failed to
enough to obtain my prompt liberation." 136 return from Russia on the night of Septem-
do
so.
Instead the
OGPU
staged a dramatic
piece of theater designed to impress Finnish military intelligence SIS.
my
That night shots were heard near the
village of Allekul
and
on the
and a man was seen being carried away on guards. When Toivo Vaha, the Soviet frontier
Soviet side of the border,
a stretcher by frontier
guard
who had
helped to smuggle Trust emissaries and couriers
across the border in apparent collaboration with the Finns (but in reality
on
OGPU
instructions), failed to
renew contact with Finnish
and the Finns concluded, as the OGPU had intended, that he and Reilly had been killed or captured during
military intelligence, both SIS
137 the frontier crossing.
According to the current, probably embroidered, Soviet version of
how
Reilly
into Russia
met
his end,
on September
he was not arrested immediately he crossed 25. Instead
he was taken by Yakushev to a
dacha near Moscow to meet a group of
OGPU
as the "political council" of the Trust. Reilly
masquerading
officers
was asked
to put
his plan of action and, according to the Soviet account,
nancing the Trust's
activities
was
West.
He was
then arrested. After
on him in December 1918
told that the death sentence passed
absentia at the end of the "Lockhart plot" trial in
would be carried
fi-
by burglarizing Russian museums and
selling their art treasures in the
interrogation Reilly
forward
proposed
out. Soviet accounts allege that in a vain
attempt to
save himself he sent a personal appeal to Dzerzhinsky:
After prolonged deliberation,
I
express willingness to give
you complete and open acknowledgment and information on matters of interest to the
OGPU concerning the organization
and personnel of the British Intelligence Service and, so far as I know it, similar information on American Intelligence and likewise about Russian emigres with whom I have had business.
Had Reilly really been prepared to cooperate with he would doubtless have been given a show
3,
1925. 138
OGPU, however,
trial like
stead, according to the Soviet version of events,
ber
the
Savinkov's. In-
he was shot on Novem-
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
102
Several years after Reilly had been lured back to Russia, the
OGPU fate.
was
still
spreading mystification and disinformation about his
The Trust deception continued
traveled
until 1927. Pepita Reilly,
to Paris then to Helsinki to seek
first
became one of its
victims. Before meeting
Mrs. Reilly "had very
in Helsinki,
provocation agent."
As soon
Maria Zakharchenko-Schultz
little
as she
who
news of her husband,
met
doubt but that she was a her,
however,
Pepita's
all
doubts dissolved:
my
At
first
second
I
glance
knew
decided that
I
that
I
was going
I
could trust her. At
to like this
my
woman.
me thus, looking very mournful, very desolate, very Mme. Schultz embraced me with great emotion, tell-
Seeing lonely,
ing
me
that she felt herself entirely responsible for
band's death, and that she would not rest until
all
my
cumstances had been discovered and a rescue effected
were
still alive,
or a revenge secured
if
he were
hus-
the cirif
he
in truth dead.
was little doubt that Sidney was dead. She produced a clipping from Izvestia that gave the
But, added Zakharchenko-Schultz, there Reilly
authorized version of the bogus gun battle at Allekul on the night of
September 28-29, and reported that "four smugglers" had been caught trying to cross the border;
two had been
killed,
one taken prisoner, and
wounds while being taken to Petrograd. According to the evidence she had collected, it was Reilly who had died of his wounds on the way to Petrograd without the Bolsheviks' realizing the fourth had died of his
who he
was. 139
Despite Pepita Reilly's confidence in Maria ZakharchenkoSchultz herself, she was highly skeptical of her story.
had a
false passport
tailored shirt
and underwear carrying
an inscription Pepita.
The
and a borrowed
in English. In his
OGPU
suit,
Though
Reilly
he was wearing a specially
his initials as well as a
watch with
pocket was a signed photograph of
could thus hardly have failed to realize that they
had captured the celebrated
British master spy
and would,
in his wife's
view, certainly have shouted their triumph from the housetops. Zakhar-
chenko-Schultz admitted that
promised to work with Pepita
all
this
had not occurred to her but
in discovering
"the truth." 140 Before long
Mrs. Reilly came close to a nervous breakdown:
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
I
called for revenge.
.
.
.
Mme.
Schultz stood over me, kind,
capable, sensible, sympathetic. She asked
completely.
the organization.
Moscow
center
of "Viardo."
me
to trust her
took her hand dumbly. She asked
I
I
I
trusted her.
me
to join
With the approval of the
joined the "Trust" under the party
And
thus
it
103
was that
I
stepped into
name
my
hus-
band's place in the ranks of anti-Bolshevism.
With the encouragement of the Trust Mrs. Reilly placed a notice of her husband's death in The Times (London): "Sidney George Reilly killed September 28th by G.P.U. troops
Though that
it
at the village of Allekul, Russia."
she did not believe that Reilly was
would force the Bolsheviks
still
alive,
she naively hoped
to reveal her husband's fate.
Soviet press simply confirmed the fact of Reilly's death lished "horrible lies" about him.
"The whole power,
and
But the
later
pub-
She was consoled by the belief that
influence, intelligence of the Trust
was being em-
ployed to find out the truth of what had happened to Sidney." Early letter from the leaders of the Trust Yakushev and Opperput) encouraging her to visit Russia once she had learned some Russian "so that you could take an active part in the work and so that we could introduce you to the members of our group." In the meantime Maria Zakharchenko-Schultz told Pepita that she was "devoting her life to finding out what had really happened to Sidney Reilly." She sent letters in secret ink to Pepita in Paris from Petrograd, Helsinki, and Warsaw: "True to her promise," wrote Mrs. Reilly, "she was leaving no stone unturned." 141 The Trust's main problem in dealing with Western intelligence services was in responding to the requests it received to provide military intelligence. The OGPU was happy to provide political disinformation but found it more difficult to concoct bogus but plausible intelligence on the Soviet armed forces and arms industry. The Trust thus usually fended off approaches from SIS and other intelligence services by insisting that it was dedicated to preparing the overthrow of the Bolshevik regime and that this objective might be prejudiced by the search for military intelligence. 142 What was probably its first major foray into military disinformation ended in near disaster. Soon after Marshal Pilsudski became Polish minister of war (and, in effect though not in
in
1926 Mrs. Reilly received a
(including
name, head of government)
in 1926,
he instructed his general
staff to
ask the Trust to obtain the Soviet mobilization plan. Yakushev was
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
104
after some hesitation, agreed to supply the plan for The document provided by the Trust, however, contained
approached and, $10,000.
patently false data on the Russian railways just across the Polish border. After
returned gery."
and
143
it
examining the alleged Soviet mobilization plan, Pilsudski to his general staff with the
one-word comment "For-
Following the suspicions aroused by the traps
Reilly, the failure of probably the Trust's first
military disinformation clearly indicated that
its
set for
Savinkov
major exercise
in
days were numbered.
In the spring of 1927 Zakharchenko-Schultz wrote a tearful letter to
Mrs. Reilly (and doubtless also to Kutepov) reporting her
discovery that the Trust was "full of provocateurs": 'All
with what work to which I gave everything bush had been "all lies and acting": is
impossible to go on
living
years'
Your husband was
He
killed in a
I
is lost.
... It
have just learned after four
so joyfully."
The Allekul am-
cowardly and ignoble fashion.
never reached the frontier. This whole comedy was
staged for the rest of us.
He was
captured at Moscow, and
imprisoned in the Lubyanka as a privileged prisoner. Each
day he was taken out for exercise
in a car
and on one of these
occasions he was killed from behind on the orders of one of the chiefs of the
GPU — Artuzov,
an old personal enemy of
who thus took his revenge in such a base manner. The fact that I did not know this does not diminish my responsihis
.
bility.
my
His blood
life.
I shall
first
.
is upon my hands, it will remain there all wash them by avenging him in a terrible
manner or by dying Mrs. Reilly's
.
in the attempt.
reaction
was one of sympathy
for
Zakharchenko-
Schultz:
It
must have been
terrible for
Marie
to
have the realization
forced upon her that for
all these years she had been the dupe of the Soviets and that through her so many people, including the husband of her dearest friend, had been killed
or captured.
Pepita did not believe her friend's version of Reilly's death but assumed that she
had been taken
in
by another deception. Zakharchenko-
Schultz ended her letter by asking for "one more favor."
Would
Pepita
Foreign Intelligence and "Active Measures" (1919-27)
105
144 send her everything she could discover about Opperput?
Unaware
that
Maria was Opperput's
mistress, Pepita replied
by
sending a dossier on Opperput which, she naively believed, "would
have surprised the worthy gentleman had he known." ZakharchenkoSchultz replied that Opperput had said he
had been forced
to
now admitted
everything to her, but
become an agent provocateur
after being
tortured in 1921:
Now
he
is
unfolding everything, he
tives of the other countries
who
is
helping the representa-
are being fooled
rounded by Bolshevik agents to escape from position.
By
and
145
the time she wrote this letter Zakharchenko-Schultz
lover
Opperput
ing the
sur-
this terrible
work of
in
was with her
Finland, where he was ostensibly engaged in expos-
the Trust. Opperput's public confessions to the press,
as well as his private briefings to
White Russian emigres and Western
intelligence services, were, however, simply the final stage in the deception. Since the
OGPU own
deception could clearly no longer be continued, the
had decided
to
end
it
in a
reputation and demoralize
nouncing the
OGPU,
that
would both enhance
fighting against
it.
And
its
omnipotence
he exaggerated the
opponents, claiming for example that the Polish
intelli-
gence service had been practically taken over by Soviet agents. 146
Scandinavian intelligence
its
opponents. While apparently de-
Opperput constantly emphasized
and the impossibility of failings of its
manner its
officer later
One
claimed that after Opperput's
disclosures the intelligence services of Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, Britain,
and France "were
for
some time
scarcely on speaking
terms." 147 In
May
1927 Zakharchenko-Schultz and Opperput returned to
Russia. Before leaving they tried to persuade Pepita Reilly, like her
husband two years
earlier, to cross the
border with them. But the
telegram sent to Paris asking her to join them was handed by American
Express to the wrong Mrs. Reilly and reached Pepita a fortnight
Had
it
reached her
in time,
late.
she would have tried to persuade Zakhar-
chenko-Schultz that Opperput was "a transparent provocateur," whose "diabolical cunning"
was luring her
to her
doom.
General Kutepov believed that Zakharchenko-Schultz's discovery of the Trust's deception had "unhinged her mind": "She seemed
bent on returning to Russia to wreak her vengeance on the people
who
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
106
had duped
whom
her,
and thus
to cleanse herself of the blood of the
many
Not long after her Mrs. Reilly received the news they had been return, Kutepov and expecting. Zakharchenko-Schultz had shot herself rather than be captured.
unwittingly she had sent to their death."
"And
thus," wrote Mrs. Reilly, "died the bravest of
women, who fought
all
against the tyrants of their country."
Russian
Kutepov
probably agreed. 148 Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda, deputy head of the
OGPU,
claimed in an interview with Pravda that both Zakharchenko-
Schultz and Kutepov were long-standing SIS agents. 149
Nowadays the KGB publicly celebrates Sindikat and Trest as two of its greatest victories over counterrevolutionary conspiracy and Western intelligence services. But at the same time it continues part of the deception plans on which they were based. The Cheka agents provocateurs who launched both operations, Opperput and Yakushev, are still alleged to have begun as, respectively, "a follower of Savinkov" and "a monarchist" before seeing the light and agreeing to cooperate with the OGPU. 150 Twenty years after the Trust was exposed it was to become the model for a further series of deception operations against both SIS and the CIA.
4 Stalin
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
Among the most pious passages in KGB literature are those that chronicle
the final hours of
20, 1926," writes
its first
chairman, Feliks Dzerzhinsky.
Fyodor Fomin, the most senior of the
to survive the Stalinist purges,
"he
fell
"On
July
early Chekists
at his post of duty, fighting the
enemies of the Party." Only three hours before his death Dzerzhinsky addressed a plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control
Commission and ist
Party
line,
in a flaming
speech aimed at deviators from the Lenin-
inquired of his audience with, according to Fomin, "com-
plete justification":
Do
you
really
know where my
strength
lies? I
never spare
from various places saying: "Right.") That the reason why everybody here trusts and likes me. I never
myself. (Voices is
speak against the dictates of good conscience, and disorder
I
attack
it
with
all
my
if I
see
strength.
Dzerzhinsky's remarkable tribute to himself was swiftly followed by a
His death provoked an even more fulsome eulogy from the plenum that had heard his final speech: fatal heart attack.
107
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
108
In the most trying times of endless plots and counterrevolutionary uprisings,
when
the Soviet land
was turning
to ashes
of the enemy surrounded the proletar-
and the bloody circle which was fighting
iat
for
its
freedom, Dzerzhinsky dis-
played superhuman energy; day and night, night and day,
without sleep, without food, and without the slightest rest he stayed at his post of duty. Hated by the enemies of the
won even
workers, he
their respect. His princely figure, his
personal bravery, his penetrating comprehension, his directness,
and
authority.
his exceptional nobility, invested
Dzerzhinsky's death came at a convenient
whose victory
him with
great
1
in
Lenin's death was
moment
for
Joseph
Stalin,
the prolonged succession struggle that followed
now almost
certainly have resisted (even
complete. "Iron Feliks" would almost
if in
the end unsuccessfully) the
OGPU's
use against dissent within the Party of the weapons of provocation
and deception that he had no compunction in using against nonCommunists. Since Lenin's death Dzerzhinsky had been chairman of the Supreme Council of the National Economy (Vesenkha) as well as head of the OGPU. He would surely have opposed both the attack on "bourgeois specialists" in industry and the ferocious class war in the countryside that Stalin was to launch within a few years. 2 In the
"flaming speech" delivered three hours before his death he uttered his
most savage
criticism yet of the Party apparatus:
"When
I
look at our
apparatus, at our system of organization, our incredible bureaucracy
and our
utter disorder, cluttered with every sort of red tape,
I
am
literally horrified.''
Dzerzhinsky's
chosen
Menzhinskyra~fall, slender
man
successor,
pliant than his predecessor. Superficially, the in
common. Both were
Vyacheslav
Rudolfovich
with gold-rimmed pince-nez, was more
two men had a good deal
old Bolsheviks of well-to-do Polish ancestry.
Menzhinsky had joined the Cheka Collegium soon after its foundation and became Dzerzhinsky's first deputy chairman on the foundation of the OGPU. He was probably the most intellectual of all KGB heads.
Even the
OGPU defector Georgi Agabekov,
who
took an uncharitable
view of his former colleagues, described him as "a man of profound culture" and "complete education." According to Fomin, Menzhinsky fluent in twelve languages when he joined the Cheka and mastered Chinese, Japanese, Persian, and Turkish. He was a
was already later
Stalin
polymath istry,
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
as well as a polyglot,
whose
astronomy, and mathematics.
109
interests included physics,
chem-
4
But Menzhinsky was also a far less powerful figure than his Even Fomin's officially approved eulogy acknowledges
predecessor. that
"He
did not have a
commanding
voice"; for
many
of those
who
worked with him "it was strange to hear an order from the OGPU " Trotsky, chairman which usually began with: 'I humbly request the Menzhinsky era, found the OGPU began in whose persecution by him strangely colorless: "The impression he made on me could best be described by saying that he made none at all. He seemed more like the shadow of some other unrealized man, or rather like a poor sketch for .
.
.'
5
an unfinished portrait."
Menzhinsky was no visited
Trotsky
at the
Stalinist.
During the
Civil
War
he had
Front to warn him that Stalin was conducting "a
very complicated intrigue" against him. But he put up no serious resist-
ance to Stalin's growing power. 6 Even before he succeeded Dzerzhinsky, Menzhinsky already suffered from angina.
ceived visitors stretched out on a couch in his
room
He commonly in the
re-
Lubyanka.
"The doctors," he explained, "have ordered me to lie down." In April 1929 a serious heart attack put Menzhinsky out of action for two years. He returned to part-time work in 1931, but by 1933 was no longer able to climb the stairs to his apartment in the Kremlin and went into virtual retirement at a dacha outside Moscow. 7
Because of Menzhinsky's leadership,
power within the
failing health
OGPU
and passive
style of
passed increasingly to his more
aggressive deputy chairman, the Jewish Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda.
Yagoda contrasted strikingly with Menzhinsky in manner as well as appearance. Even within the KGB he is nowadays remembered only with embarrassment. Few memoirs of the Stalin era mention his name without execration. "As manifestly as Menzhinsky is a man of complete education," wrote Agabekov, "so is Yagoda brutal, uncultivated, and gross." His coarseness and brutality cannot have been evident when Dzerzhinsky appointed him as second deputy chairman in 1923. To Dzerzhinsky he probably seemed simply an efficient, energetic, ambitious bureaucrat. Yagoda became a classic example of a bureaucrat corrupted by excessive power, with a growing pretentiousness that matched his increasing brutality. On the eve of his fall from power in the summer of 1936, one of his officers found him
Thick-set, with a ruddy complexion,
8
absorbed
in
designing for himself a
new
full-dress uniform: white
woolen tunic decorated with gold braid, a small
gilt
dagger of the kind
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
110
once worn by Tsarist naval imported patent
leather.
blue trousers, and shoes of
officers, light
9
Stalin never wholly trusted
Yagoda, partly because of
his
own
anti-Semitism, partly because of Yagoda's ideological sympathy with the "Right Opposition" and
charismatic leader Nikolai Bukharin.
its
Kamenev
that both Yagoda and Trilisser, second deputy chairman of the OGPU and head of INO, were "with us." Yagoda, he said, had secretly given him information on peasant ris10 ings. But Bukharin also predicted that Yagoda was an opportunist whose support could not be relied on. In 1931 Stalin tried to strengthen his influence in the OGPU by sending a Party apparatchik, A. I. Akulov, to be joint first deputy chairman with Yagoda. Within a year Akulov had been frozen out. Stalin, however, reached an accommodation with Yagoda while waiting for an opportunity to place his own
In 1928 Bukharin told
11
man
at the
head of the
Yagoda was throw
in his lot
OGPU.
a careerist rather than an ideologue, prepared to
with Stalin to further his career but never willing to
him unconditional support.
give
Trilisser
was a more committed sup-
porter of the Right Opposition; as early as 1923 he had joined with
Bukharin
in attacking the Trotskyist line. 12
Yagoda, seeing the Central
But
at the
end of 1929,
Trilisser as a potential rival, successfully intrigued with
Committee
succeeded as head of
to oust
INO
him from the OGPU.
by the former
KRO
Trilisser
was
(Counterespionage)
chief Artur Artuzov. 13
The OGPU's first
successful winding-up of the Trust deception during the
year of the Menzhinsky- Yagoda leadership was overshadowed by
an embarrassing
series of foreign intelligence failures.
the rapidly expanding network of
The
security of
OGPU and military intelligence resi-
dencies was threatened by the vulnerability of Soviet cipher systems and their inexperience in running enthusiastic but local
Communists
sometimes amateurish
as agents. In the spring of 1927 there
were sensa-
tional revelations of Soviet espionage in eight different countries.
In
March
a major spy ring
the White Russian general turned
leading
official in
found engaged police
in
was revealed
OGPU
in Poland,
headed by
agent, Daniel Vetrenko; a
the Soviet-Turkish trade corporation in Istanbul
was
espionage on the Turkish-Iraqi border; and the Swiss
announced the
arrest of
two members of a Soviet spy
ring. In
April a police raid on the Soviet consulate in Beijing uncovered a mass of documents on Soviet espionage; and the French Surete arrested eight
Stalin
members of a of the
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
111
Soviet spy ring run by Jean Cremet, a Politburo
French Communist
Party. In
May
officials
member
of the Austrian for-
eign ministry were found supplying secret information to the residency,
and there was a Special Branch raid
in
OGPU
London on
the
premises of the All-Russian Co-operative Society (Arcos) and the trade
what the excitable British home denounced with some degree of "one of the most complete and one of the most nefarious
delegation, following the discovery of
secretary, Sir William Joynson-Hicks,
hyperbole as
spy systems that
it
has ever been
my
lot to
The two most traumatic shocks were the police raids publication of
for Soviet foreign espionage
and London, both followed by the
in Beijing
some of
ments published
meet." 14
the intelligence
documents
seized.
The docu-
China provided a wealth of embarrassing
in
detail
on
Soviet secret operations (mostly by military intelligence), including instructions from
Moscow
"not to shrink from any measures, even
including looting and massacres" when promoting conflicts between the Chinese population and Westerners. There were also agents, instructions to Chinese
Communists
operations, and details of munitions smuggled into China. 15
ments published
in
names of
to assist in intelligence
England were fewer and
The docu-
far less dramatic, but
accompanied by the equally embarrassing revelation that Britain had once again broken Soviet diplomatic codes. The prime minister, foreign secretary,
and home secretary
all
read decrypted extracts from inter-
cepted Soviet telegrams to the House of
Commons. 16
the Kremlin and the OGPU of the sensational and London was all the greater because they came at turning points in Russian relations with both China and Britain. Since 1922 Soviet policy in China had been based on an alliance with the Nationalist Kuomintang. In April 1927 a Communist-led rising delivered Shanghai into the hands of the Kuomintang general Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang, said Stalin, "should be squeezed like a lemon and then thrown away." In the event it was the Communists who became the lemon. Having gained control of Shanghai, Chiang began the systematic massacre of the Communists who had captured it for him. The Communists, on Stalin's instructions, replied with a series of armed risings. All were disastrous failures. 17 Revelations of Soviet espionage also led to a break, though of
The impact on
revelations in Beijing
a less brutal kind, in relations with Britain,
Union in
as the leading world power.
May
1926,
which conspiracy
still
regarded in the Soviet
Ever since the British general
strike
theorists in the Conservative Party
had
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
112
wrongly attributed to a Russian
plot, pressure
had been mounting on
Stanley Baldwin's government to break off diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. Dramatic new evidence of Soviet espionage in the armed services in the spring of 1927
was the
last straw.
On May
26, 1927, Sir
Austen Chamberlain informed the Soviet charge d'affaires, Arkadi Rosengolts, that His Majesty's Government was breaking off diplomatic relations because of "anti-British espionage and propaganda."
He
gave his message an unusually personal point by quoting a decrypted Soviet telegram sent by Rosengolts to
you request material to enable you against His Majesty's Government."
On
his
way home by
tral Station to breakfast
Moscow on
April
1
to support a political
train Rosengolts stopped at
which campaign
"in
Warsaw Cen-
with the Soviet ambassador Pyotr Voikov in
left, Voikov was shot White Russian emigre, who shouted, "This is for Nationalist Russia, not for the International!" The Soviet government was quick to claim that "a British arm directed the blow which killed Voikov." 18 Ironically, during the last of the prewar show trials in 1938, Rosengolts was himself forced to confess to working for British intelligence from 1926 onward. 19 The Soviet intelligence disasters in the spring of 1927 had two immediate consequences. The first was a drastic overhaul of the security
the railway buffet. Just before Rosengolts's train several times by a
of Soviet embassies,
OGPU residencies, and cipher systems. An urgent
and trade delegations ordered the destrucdocuments whose capture might cause fresh embarrassment. Even in Teheran, where the risk of attack on the embassy was insignificant, the huge bonfires of OGPU archives in the diplomatic compound alarmed the local fire brigade. OGPU residencies were ordered to keep on file correspondence for the past month only, and to make plans for
circular to Soviet missions tion of all
its
immediate destruction
in the event of a raid.
New
regulations for
running local Communists as agents were intended to ensure that no future trace survived of their contacts with the
OGPU. 20
and OGPU communicaKremlin ordered the adoption of the laborious but (when correctly used) unbreakable "one-time pad" cipher system. As a result, between 1927 and the Second World War Western cryptanalysts were able to decrypt virtually no high-grade Soviet communications, though GC & CS in Britain continued to have some success with coded Comintern messages and low-level Russian military traffic. A. G. Denniston, the operational head of GC & CS, wrote bitterly that the result of the
To
tions the
protect the security of diplomatic
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
Stalin
government
publicity given by the British
113
to the breaking of Soviet
21 codes had been "to compromise our work beyond question."
These intelligence disasters had a profound Characteristically he
saw them
effect
on
Stalin.
as evidence of a deep-laid imperialist
plot:
It is
hardly open to doubt that the chief contemporary ques-
tion
is
that of the threat of a
new
imperialist war. It
is
a matter of some indefinite and immaterial "danger" of a
war.
It is
a matter of a real
in general,
The
new
and material threat of a new war
and a war against the U.S.S.R.
in particular.
leader in creating "a united imperialist front" against the Soviet
Union, Stalin alleged, was
and
not
its
chief enemy, "the English bourgeoisie
fighting staff, the Conservative Party": "English capitalism
its
always has been,
is,
and
will
continue to be the most ferocious sup-
pressor of popular revolutions." Stalin detected three main stages to
The first was was intended to "redocuments about the disruptive work of the U.S.S.R.,
the plot orchestrated by the Conservative government. the raid on the Soviet embassy in Beijing, which veal 'awful'
thereby creating an atmosphere of general indignation." stage in the plot
was the Arcos
raid in
London and
The second
the breach in
Anglo-Soviet diplomatic relations, designed to "start a diplomatic
blockade of the U.S.S.R. throughout Europe" as a prelude to war.
The
third stage
was the murder of Voikov
Warsaw, "organized by
in
the agents of the Conservative Party" in imitation of the assassination
of the
Archduke Franz Ferdinand
at Sarajevo in
1914, which had
sparked off the First World War. 22
Though
this British "plot"
bly be others. Britain
groups
in the
was continuing
to finance "espionage-terrorist
imperialist powers. Stalin
those leaders of the workers' 'invention,'
who
movement who
were two urgent
denounced
soothe the workers with pacifist
priorities in order to
"all
'consider' the threat of a
shut their eyes to the bourgeoisie's preparations for a
The
inevita-
U.S.S.R." and trying to foment revolts in collusion with
White emigres and other
new war an
had miscarried, there would
lies,
who
new war." There
counter the imperialist threat.
was "strengthening the defensive capacity of our country" by economic growth, especially in war industries, and improving the vigifirst
lance of the Soviet people.
The second
priority
was "strengthening our
rear" by a determined onslaught on alleged internal enemies: terrorists,
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
114
and other "rubbish." The "rubbish,"
industrial wreckers,
plied, included the opposition within the
Communist
Stalin im-
"What can
Party:
its new attacks on new war? What can we say about the same opposition finding it timely, when war threatens, to strengthen
we
say after
of our wretched opposition and
all this
the party in face of the threat of a
on the party?" 23
their attacks
By 1927 the only significant resistance to Stalin's growing personal power came from within the Bolshevik Party. There is no doubt that the war scare came at a convenient moment as Stalin prepared to consolidate his own leadership. But there is equally little doubt that Stalin, the
most "sickly suspicious"
Communist
(to use
own
leaders, believed his
Khrushchev's phrase) of all
conspiracy theory. So, in one
form or another, did most of the Party hierarchy. Indeed almost obliged them to do
so. It
was an
article of
their ideology
Bolshevik faith that
international capitalism could not tolerate the consolidation of Soviet
power. Imperialist governments and their secret services must necessar-
be plotting the overthrow of the "worker-peasant state."
ily
responsibility of the
was the
OGPU as "the shield and sword of the Revolution"
to uncover the inevitable imperialist plots
and nip them
Since no major Western leader from the end of the Civil rise to
It
power of Adolf Hitler
toppling the Bolshevik regime,
in it
in the bud.
War
until the
1933 gave any serious thought to
followed that the only plots that the
OGPU could uncover were imaginary ones.
Stalin
became increasingly
obsessed by imaginary plots. During the decade after the war scare of
1927 he gradually constructed a steadily more comprehensive conspir-
acy theory, which in as
Hitler.
and
Hitler,
murder
its final
form was almost as grotesque, though not
myth of the Jewish world conspiracy that obsessed The two greatest dictators in modern European history, Stalin
venomous,
as the
were both conspiracy theorists
as the only
way
who ended by
seeing
mass
to liquidate the imaginary plots that threatened
them. Their chief accomplices were their security forces.
The his
own
first
use to which Stalin put the
personal authority within the
Cheka's, the
OGPU's
OGPU was to strengthen
Communist
Party. Like the
combat counterrevolution. But the definition of counterrevolution changed. Under Lenin it had meant opposition to the Communist Party. Under Stalin it increasingly meant opposition to Stalin. Since the only significant opposition to Stalin came from other Communists, the OGPU began to use principal duty remained to
within the Party the techniques of infiltration and provocation formerly
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
Stalin
reserved for the Party's opponents.
The
first
115
victims were the "Left
Opposition" led by Trotsky and Zinoviev.
OGPU
In September 1927 an
Opposition uncovered an
illegal
agent provocateur in the Left
"printing shop" (in reality
little
more
than a duplicating machine) on which the opposition planned to print its
program. According to the
Yagoda reported
OGPU defector Aleksandr Orlov,
your secret agent to the rank of an
officer
"Good!
when
Now
promote of General Wrangel and
the discovery, Stalin replied:
Wrangelian White Guardist." Stalin duly reported to the Central Committee and Central Control Commission that the Left Opposition was guilty of collusion with the Whites. In November 1927 Trotsky, Zinoindicate in your report that the Trotskyites collaborated with a 24
viev,
and almost a hundred of
their followers
were expelled from the
denounced "Trotskyism," and was readmitted to the Party. Trotsky refused and in January 1928 was sentenced by the OGPU to internal exile in a remote corner of KazakhParty. Zinoviev agreed to recant,
stan on the Chinese border.
25
Less than a decade later Trotsky became the object of the most
determined manhunt
in
KGB
Trotskyist witch hunt was
removal from
Moscow had
history.
still
In 1928, however, the anti-
in its infancy
about
it
and the great
heretic's
an element of black comedy, which
would have been unthinkable only a few years later. When the OGPU came to his Moscow flat on the morning of January 17 to take him into exile, Trotsky was still in his pajamas. As in prerevolutionary days
when
the police
came to arrest him, he locked himself in
his
room. After
unsuccessful negotiations through the locked door, the officer leading the
OGPU detachment ordered his men to force an entry. Trotsky was
surprised to recognize the officer as one of his former bodyguards
during the Civil War. the officer broke
On
seeing his former commissar in his pajamas
down and sobbed, "Shoot me, Comrade Trotsky,
shoot
me!" Trotsky refused, successfully pacified his one-time bodyguard and persuaded him of his duty to obey orders, reprehensible though they were.
He
then resumed his posture of passive disobedience and refused
either to dress or to leave.
The
OGPU detachment removed Trotsky's
pajamas, put on his clothes, and carried him, amid the protests of his family, to a car waiting to transport press.
him
to the Trans-Siberian Ex-
26
When Trotsky was forced into foreign exile in Turkey in February 1929, the
OGPU did its best to ensure that this time there were no
witnesses of his departure in case he resorted once again to passive
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
116
Together with his wife, elder son Lev Sedov, and an escort
resistance.
of two
OGPU
officers,
he boarded the Ilyich
Odessa harbor, and
in
found no other passengers on board. Even the crew were warned to keep out of sight and avoid contact with Trotsky's group. As the Ilyich entered the Bosporus, one of Trotsky's
$1,500 "to enable him to
settle
OGPU
and took the money. He spent the
his pride
exile in the Soviet
island of Prinkipo.
embassy
escorts
at Istanbul,
first six
weeks of his foreign
moved
then
to the Turkish
27
The witch hunt conducted by
OGPU in the late
the
1920s was directed
against economic as well as political subversion. In
OGPU
handed him
abroad." Penniless, Trotsky swallowed
March 1928
the
announced the discovery of a "counterrevolutionary plot"
in
the Shakhty coal mines of the Donbass basin. According to the most
persuasive account, the plot was
late in 1927 by the Yevdokimov, who reported to Menzhinsky that a group of engineers in the town of Shakhty had conspired with former mine owners in the White Russian diaspora and with Western imperialists to wreck the mines. When Menzhinsky
OGPU
first
uncovered
chief in the northern Caucasus, Y. G.
demanded
Yevdokimov produced a series of intercepted letfrom abroad. Though the letters appeared relatively harmless, Yevdokimov claimed that they contained "wrecking" instructions in a code known only to the engineers. Menzhinsky was skeptical and gave Yevdokimov a fortnight to break the code. At this point Yevdokimov appealed directly to Stalin, who authorized him to arrest the engineers. At a special meeting of the Politburo Stalin was evidence,
ters written to the engineers
authorized to take personal charge of the case. 28
Out of a
series of incidents involving industrial accidents, faulty
machinery, inebriated workers,
inefficient
—
neers, foreign businessmen,
and
of genuine vandalism, the
OGPU
probably
managers, bourgeois engi-
—a limited number of cases
then constructed a "far-reaching
international intrigue" orchestrated from
Warsaw,
Berlin,
and
Paris.
After two months' denunciations by the Soviet media of "dastardly saboteurs, plotters
was
set
and
whole
spies," the
fantastic conspiracy theory
out in a 250,000-word indictment of
German
Their long-drawn-out show
immense
fifty
Russian and three
technicians and engineers accused of sabotage and espionage. trial,
which opened
crystal chandeliers of the
(the prerevolutionary Nobles' Club), sion. In all,
in
Moscow House
May
beneath the
of Trade Unions
had a new audience
at every ses-
over a hundred thousand factory workers, peasants, school-
Stalin
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
117
children and other groups of selected spectators witnessed parts of the
Press correspondent, Eugene Lyons, a former
proceedings.
The United
Communist
fellow traveler, wrote afterward:
The few who insisted
their innocence
thrills for spectators.
To
panic in their voices,
.
.
.
provided the biggest
them at bay, their backs arched, turning from a stinging question by the see
prosecutor to ward off a statement by a fellow-prisoner,
swinging around to meet a judge's admonition flailing, still,
stumbling over their
—
own words
—spinning,
finally
standing
exhausted and terror-stricken, staring into the audito-
rium as though aware of spectators for the indeed keen sport: lucky shock-brigadiers
first
time,
was
who drew such
a
session!
The macabre drama played out in the House of Trade Unions was somewhat less brutal than the later show trials of the Stalin era. Only eleven of the alleged Shakhty saboteurs were sentenced to death, and six
were reprieved as a reward for good performances
assigned to them by the tors
OGPU. The
in the roles
great majority both of the specta-
and of Soviet newspaper readers found the drama presented
their edification convincing.
"The
class
enemy
in
for
our midst" conspiring
with counterrevolutionaries abroad provided convenient scapegoats for shortages and privations that might otherwise have been blamed on the leadership. 29
At the April 1928 plenum of the Central Committee
Stalin
himself spelled out the enormous ramifications of the conspiracy legedly uncovered at Shakhty:
would be stupid
assume that international capital will No, comrades, that is not true. Classes exist, international capital exists, and it cannot calmly watch the development of the country which is building socialism. Formerly international capital thought of overthrowing the Soviet power by means of direct military intervention. The It
to
leave us in peace.
failed. Now it is trying, and will try in the future, to weaken our economic power by means of invisible economic
attempt
intervention, not always obvious but fairly serious, organiz-
ing sabotage, planning
all
kinds of "crises" in one branch of
industry or another, and thus facilitating the possibility of
al-
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
118
future military intervention.
It is all
part and parcel of the
class struggle of international capital against the Soviet
power, and there can be no talk of any accidental happenings.
Those
30
KGB officers with whom Gordievsky discussed the Shakhty trial
half a century later recognized that
and spy
fever. In
itself to
admit as
of the
KGB
it
was a product of wreckermania
Gordievsky's time, however, the
much
completed
officially.
in
Even the
KGB could not bring
classified
in-house history
1978 under the direction of the head of the
Second Chief (Counterintelligence) Directorate, Grigori Fyodorovich Grigorenko, maintained, without conviction, that there had been a real conspiracy. 31 In public, at the beginning of the Gorbachev era, the
KGB
was still sticking rigidly to the interpretation of the Shakhty affair given by Stalin in 1928. According to an unclassified official history published in 1979:
It is
undoubted that the wreckers,
who came
spies,
and
diversionists
forth in the late 1920s in a unified anti-Soviet
formation represented a serious threat to the development of socialism and the strengthening of the defensive might of our nation.
The exposure of
OGPU
organs, including special sections, helped the Party
and government
this hostile
underground by the
to thwart the anti-Soviet plans of interna-
tional reaction. 32
—
In 1928 this conspiracy theory was taken seriously very probably even by most of the OGPU officers who manufactured the evidence at the Shakhty trial. Stalin's Russia suffered from a variant of the spy fever that had swept much of Europe during the First World War. During the first weeks of the war "many thousand" suspected German spies were reported to the London police. Not one proved genuine. Spy
mania, wrote the head of the Metropolitan Special Branch, Basil
Thom-
"assumed a virulent epidemic form accompanied by delusions which defied treatment." For the remainder of the war some ministers and a section of public opinion suffered from the recurrent delusion that
son,
industrial unrest
and other hindrances to the war
effort
were the
result
of subversive conspiracies funded by the enemy. In a celebrated case for criminal
libel in
1918 the jury was persuaded that the
service possessed a "black
book"
listing
German
secret
47,000 British sexual perverts,
Stalin
mostly effort.
in
high places,
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
who were
119
being blackmailed to sabotage the war
33
Spy mania returned at the beginning of the Second World War. fall of France and the Low Countries to the Germans,
In 1940, after the Britain
much
Home is
was swept by
column" of enemy subversives not World War. A
fears of a "fifth
extravagant than the spy mania of the First
less
Intelligence report in June concluded: "Fifth
Column
hysteria
reaching dangerous proportions." For a time even Winston Churchill
and
his chiefs of staff believed that "the
most ruthless action" was
34 required to root out what was in reality an almost nonexistent menace.
The wartime fifth
columns,
delusions in the Western democracies about large
like the
Communists McCarthy, make it
nary
in
Cold the
War
witch hunt against frequently imagi-
United
States
led
by
Senator
Joseph
easier to understand the origins of the Stalinist
obsession with anti-Soviet subversion at a time
under simultaneous threat from class enemies
at
when the regime felt home and imperialists
abroad. But the Stalinist witch hunt was different both in kind and in scale
from anything experienced
in the
West. Churchill's alarmism at
menace of a fifth column in 1940 was short lived. By the end of the year he had concluded that "witch-finding activities" were counterproductive. The American administration during the Cold War was one of the targets rather than one of the instigators of McCarthy's witch the
hunts.
By
Union was West the persecution of imaginary spies and subversives during the two world wars and of imaginary Communists during the Cold War produced only a handful of fatalities. In the Soviet Union during the 1930s imaginary enemies of the people were liquidated in the millions. Stalin and his supporters used the imaginary contrast, the witchfinder-general in the Soviet
Stalin himself. In the
conspiracy revealed at the Shakhty
trial to call for
an end to the
NEP
era of tolerance to bourgeois interests and the beginning of a determined assault ists in
on the
class
enemies wrecking the economy, bourgeois special-
industry and kulaks (better-off peasants) in the countryside.
Having disposed of the Left Opposition, propriate
its
Stalin felt free to ap-
radical policies for a dramatic socialist transformation of
the Soviet economy. Bukharin and the Right Opposition, less radical policies
who
based on conciliation rather than class
favored conflict,
were swept aside even more easily than the Left. In January 1929 Bukharin lost his place on the Politburo. High among the reasons that impelled the Stalinist leadership to embark during the next year on a
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
120
crash program of industrialization under the First Five- Year Plan and
compulsory collectivization in the countryside designed "to liquidate the kulaks as a class" was a chronic sense of insecurity at the combined
menace of class enemies within and imperialist foes abroad. In a speech Committee in November 1928 Stalin insisted that the survival of socialism in one country depended on the ability of the Soviet economy to overtake the West: "Either we do it, or we shall be crushed." He repeated the same warning in February 1931:
to the Central
One
feature in the history of old Russia
was the continual
beatings she suffered because of her backwardness. fifty
We
must catch up
or
The
we go
Stalinist
.
.
.
We
or a hundred years behind the advanced countries.
are
under.
this distance in ten years. Either
we do
it
35
transformation of the Soviet economy was born in ideal-
ism as well as in insecurity. The prospect of a great leap forward into a fully socialist militants
much
economy kindled among the new generation of Party the same messianic fervor that had inspired Lenin's
followers in 1917. Fifty years later, the dissident Soviet general Petro
Grigorenko
still
recalled "the enthusiasm
Communists
other young
and passion" of himself and "The Year of the
as Stalin hailed 1929 as
Great Change":
Bread was
in dreadfully short supply, there
were queues,
rationing and famine were just around the corner,
were carried away by
Stalin's [message]
and
and yet we
rejoiced: "Yes,
a great change indeed, the liquidation of peasant small-hold-
from which capitalism might re-emerge. Let the sharks of imperialism just try to
ings, the destruction of the very soil
attack us now.
Now we
are on the high road to the triumph
of socialism." 36
Many
of Trotsky's Russian supporters were
nomic
vision.
won over by Stalin's ecoYuri Pyatakov, president of the State Bank and a former
close associate of Trotsky, declared in an impassioned speech to the
Council of People's Commissars in October 1929: "The heroic period of our socialist construction has arrived." 37
But
if
the "heroic period" of socialist construction galvanized
the enthusiasm of
many
Party militants,
it
also required the coercive
Stalin
power of the
OGPU.
In
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
November 1929
of over three years, whether
OGPU, whose
were trans-
network of labor
vast
(gulag) rapidly developed during the 1930s into a major source
The mixture of visionary
of forced labor for the Soviet economy.
ism and brute force during the Soviet industrial economy. tic
prisoners serving sentences
for political offenses or not,
ferred to the jurisdiction of the
camps
all
121
production targets
first
ideal-
Five- Year Plan transformed the
More was accomplished by
in the conviction that there
which Bolshevism cannot storm" than
realistic
but
setting unrealis-
were "no citadels less inspiring esti-
mates could ever have achieved. Great new industrial centers were created in the Urals, Kuzbass, and the Volga, the cities of Magnitogorsk
and Komsomolsk-on-the-Amur rose from the virgin ogy was taken to remote areas
in
soil;
new
technol-
Kazakhstan and the Caucasus, the
dam was constructed, and And all this was achieved in
mighty Dnieper
the output of electricity
almost trebled.
the early 1930s at a time
when
the depression in the
July 1929 was at
its
West sparked by the Wall Street Crash of spokesmen confidently contrasted the
nadir. Soviet
successes of socialist construction with the insoluble contradictions of international capitalism. 38
The depression
did not, in Soviet eyes,
make
capitalism less
dangerous. Stalin warned in June 1930:
Every time that
capitalist contradictions begin to
the bourgeoisie turns say:
"Cannot we
ism, or
all
its
grow acute
gaze towards the U.S.S.R. as
settle this or that contradiction
if
to
of capital-
the contradictions taken together, at the expense
of the U.S.S.R., the land of the Soviets, the citadel of the revolution,
working
which by its very existence is revolutionizing the ?" Hence the tendency to and the colonies
class
.
.
.
adventurist assaults on the U.S.S.R. and to intervention, a
tendency which developing
is
found to be strengthened as a
result of the
crisis.
With the Conservative 1929, the return of
defeat in the British general election of June
Ramsay MacDonald's second Labour government,
and the resumption of Anglo-Soviet diplomatic relations, Britain ceased to be the chief menace. The main threat of war, said Stalin, now came from France, "the most aggressive and militarist country of all aggressive and militarist countries." 39 Soviet fear of attack was heightened by a French campaign against Russian "dumping" on Western markets.
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
122
Commerce and Industry oron Soviet imports and tried to persuade France's allies in Eastern Europe to follow suit. The Soviet Union retaliated with a total ban on French imports and public warnings at the aggressive 40 designs of French imperialism. The French plan, claimed Vyacheslav Molotov, chairman of Sovnarkom and future commissar for foreign In October 1930 the French Ministry of
dered restrictions
was "to organize an economic blockade of the U.S.S.R." as a
affairs,
preparation for an armed attack. 41
The renewed
threat of foreign aggression intensified the hunt
for internal saboteurs in league with foreign, especially French, imperialists.
On September 22,
1930, the press
announced that the
OGPU had
uncovered a "counterrevolutionary society" of forty-eight professors, agronomists, and food administrators, headed by Professor Alexander
Ryazantsev,
who were
accused of a plot to sabotage the country's food
supply. Next day the papers were filled with editorials
and workers'
resolutions calling for the counterrevolutionary conspirators to be executed.
On
had been
September 24 shot,
it
was announced that
all
and extracts were published of
forty-eight villains
their confessions to
mostly imaginary crimes. At hundreds of workers' meetings, according to the Soviet press, "the proletariat fervently
OGPU,
in liquidating this dastardly plot."
OGPU
thanked the glorious
the unsheathed sword of the revolution, for
its
splendid
work
42
Behind almost every shortage and major industrial accident the uncovered further "dastardly plots." The most remarkable
imaginary conspiracy uncovered during the
first
Five- Year Plan
was
that of an
underground "Industrial Party" comprising two thousand engineers and official planners who for some time had been planning the overthrow of the Soviet regime. They were in collaboration with the general staffs of a dozen nations, led by the French, the leading French
statesmen
Raymond
Poincare and Aristide Briand, assorted foreign
Lawrence of Arabia and the oil magnate Sir Henry Deterding, and a White Russian provisional government in Paris (two of whose members turned out to be dead), waiting to return to Russia and restore capitalism. 43 The opening of the show trial of the Industrial Party's eight-man executive committee amid the faded splendors of the former Nobles' Club was accompanied by a gigantic parade of more than half a million factory and office workers tramping through the snow to chants of "Death! Death! Death!" A warning was issued celebrities, including
during the
trial
that bands of imperialist agents might at any time
Stalin
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
123
attempt to rescue the accused and unleash a massive campaign of sabotage. But after an eloquent appeal by the aging
Maxim Gorky
to
the workers, peasants, and intellectuals of the entire world, the agents failed to materialize
averted.
and the imaginary threat of foreign war was
44
Haifa century
after the trial the
KGB
still
absurdly maintained
had been a genuine "underground espionage directed and financed by Western secret agents, as well as
that the Industrial Party
centre
by
.
.
.
.
.
.
former major Russian capitalists located
in Paris."
45
Gordievsky
KGB who took this nonsense seriously. It is tempting to conclude that the OGPU attitude to the trial was as cynical in 1930 as that of the KGB fifty years later, and that the whole Industrial knew no one
in the
was a deliberate deception from beginning to end. The truth The OGPU had no doubt discovered disaffected engineers and officials who despised the Soviet regime and had links of various kinds with the vast White Russian diaspora abroad. But the Party is
affair
not so simple.
OGPU's
incurable addiction to conspiracy theory convinced
was dealing with
imperialist agents its
it
a highly organized counterrevolutionary plot in
must necessarily have a
collective imagination in scripting
that
it
which
part. It then felt free to use
and staging a dramatic recon-
struction of the conspiracy for the edification of the Soviet people, their friends in the
Communist
International,
and other progressive forces
abroad.
Most of the evidence required for these Stalinist morality plays was provided by the confessions of the "conspirators." In 1967 one of the victims of the early
show
trials
gave this written deposition to the
procurator of the Soviet Union, explaining
how the OGPU obtained the
confessions:
Some who tried .
.
.
yielded to the promise of future benefits. Others, to resist,
were "made to see reason" by physical
methods. They were beaten
—on the
face
and head, on the
sexual organs; they were thrown to the floor and kicked,
choked until no blood flowed to the head, and so on. They were kept on the konveier without sleep, put in the kartser (half-dressed
and barefoot
hot and stuffy
cell
in a cold cell, or in
an unbearably
without windows), and so on. For some,
the mere threat of such methods, with an appropriate onstration,
was enough. 46
dem-
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
124
Very few indeed of those for whose
show
edification the
trials
were
intended had serious doubts about them. Even the Trotskyists, despite their
own
persecution by the
OGPU,
had no doubt about the
reality of
the Industrial Party conspiracy. Trotsky insisted that "specialist wreckers"
had been "hired by foreign imperialists and emigre Russian comAn underground Trotskyist in Moscow saw the workers'
pradores."
anger
at the "specialist
wreckers" as encouraging evidence of their
A
"genuine revolutionary enthusiasm." Factory
in
Moscow
condemning the
tion of the workers
memory
for life."
The
at the Red Proletarian "The anger and indigna-
worker
recalled forty years later:
traitors' acts
have remained
in
my
47
Industrial Party trial ended, unexpectedly, in anticlimax.
Five death sentences were delivered by the judges to cheers and a storm of applause in the courtroom. Then, two days
ment.
Some were
later,
it
had been commuted to ten
that the death sentences
surreptitiously rehabilitated.
48
was announced
years' imprison-
The reasons
for the
change of heart were economic. Despite the training of a new generation of proletarian technocrats, the rapid progress of the
first
Five- Year
Plan had revealed industry's continuing dependence on the
skills
of
"bourgeois specialists."
At
a
zhonikidze,
conference
of managers
who had become head
approach" toward
who
'specialist baiting' as a
"maximum
the old school
Sergo Ord-
trial,
Economic
emphasized the need for "a
who "work honestly." During number of cases of exiled and imprisoned
requested rehabilitation. Stalin himself hypocritically
declared in June 1931:
for
1931
specialists
spring the council reviewed a
engineers
in
of the Supreme National
Council during the Industrial Party careful
early
"We
have always regarded and
still
regard
harmful and disgraceful phenomenon"; he called
care for those specialists, engineers and technicians of
who
are definitely turning to the side of the working Menzhinsky underlined the wisdom of Stalin's speech in a rare article in Pravda, emphasizing that Dzerzhinsky had made frequent use of the OGPU "to protect specialists from all kinds of oppression." 49 The moratorium on "specialist baiting" did not end wrecker mania. Stalin and many in the OGPU remained convinced that part of class."
the counterrevolutionary conspiracy hatched by domestic traitors and foreign enemies involved a long-term plan to sabotage the Soviet econ-
omy. In March 1933
six British electrical engineers
Metropolitan-Vickers
Company on
together with a larger
number of Russian wreckers on charges of sabo-
working for the
projects in Russia were arrested
Stalin
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
Though some of the
tage and espionage.
125
British engineers
had obtained
what the Metro-Vic managing director described as "general informa-
economy (probably of a kind
tion" on the Soviet
that
would have been
freely available in the West), the sabotage was, as usual, imaginary.
now
the routine of the
show
trial in
the former Nobles' Club
The Russian defendants duly confessed
established.
their
By
was well
imaginary
crimes:
them watched for the flick of Prosecutor Vyshinsky's whip and obeyed with the frightened alacrity of trained animals. In their "last words" they begged for their lives and promised to do penance in the tones and the words that had become a familiar refrain since the Shakhty trial. All of
The British engineers played their parts less professionally. Two had made elaborate pretrial "confessions" to the OGPU, but both withdrew them (one only temporarily) during the proceedings. Another defendant made the unprecedented claim in open court that the trial was "a frame-up
.
.
.
based on evidence of terrorized prisoners." All but one
of the Russians were given prison sentences. So were two of the Metro-
Vic engineers. The British government retaliated with a trade embargo,
which was
As
July 1933
lifted in
well as leading the
when
the engineers were released.
campaign against
50
industrial saboteurs, the
OGPU also spearheaded the drive to collectivize agriculture during the First Five- Year Plan.
months of forced
The most spectacular achievement of
collectivization
was what
the early
Stalin described as "the
liquidation of the kulaks as a class." Since kulaks were "the
sworn
enemies of the collective farm movement," their removal from their
farms was a precondition of collectivization. The term "kulak" was applied not simply to the better-off peasants but to any peasants however poor
—
for example, devout churchgoers
collectivization.
families
began
The
first
mass
arrests
late in 1929. All
were
by the shot.
—suspected of opposing
OGPU of heads of kulak
Then, early
in 1930,
whole
kulak families were rounded up by the thousands, marched to railway stations, placed
on
and
left
wilderness, if
cattle cars, transported to the Arctic or Siberian
to fend for themselves.
The Politburo did not
care
they lived or died.
This operation ants
—was too large
—eventually involving perhaps ten million peas-
for the
OGPU to run by itself;
25,000 young Party
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
126
militants, hastily trained at two- week courses five
thousanders"
—
—the so-called "twenty-
were drafted into the countryside to help evacuate
The young militants Red Guards in the Chi-
the kulaks and set up kolkhozes (collective farms).
showed much the same
ruthless fervor as the
nese Cultural Revolution a generation
later,
convinced that they were
dealing with class enemies engaged in a counterrevolutionary conspir-
One
acy to prevent the victory of socialism.
of the "twenty-five thou-
sanders," Lev Kopelev, later wrote: "I was convinced that soldiers
on an
we were
waging war on kulak saboteurs
invisible front,
for the
sake of bread that the country needed for the Five- Year Plan." 51 But for
some veteran
OGPU officers the suffering and the horror of forcing
millions of peasants from their
Deutscher found one
OGPU
homes was too much
to bear. Isaac
colonel broken by his recent experiences
in the countryside:
"I
am an
old Bolshevik," he said, almost sobbing. "I
against the Tsar all
and then
that in order that
I
fought in the
should
I
machine-guns and order
worked I do
war. Did
civil
now surround
villages with
my men to fire indiscriminately into
crowds of peasants? Oh, no, no!" 52
By
March 1930
the beginning of
the twenty-five thousanders had
herded over half the peasants into kolkhozes and reduced the countryside to chaos. Stalin
was forced
to call a halt in order to allow the spring
sowing to proceed. After the publication in Pravda on March 2 of his article "Dizzy with Success" hypocritically reproaching the militants for not observing the "voluntary principle," the population of the kolk-
hozes
fell
by over
half.
Once
the harvest
was
safely gathered in, forced
collectivization resumed.
The mayhem of
collectivization,
lower agricultural
yields,
sharply increased state procurements, drought and crop failure in 1932
combined
to
produce
in
1932-33 the most
terrible
famine
in the history
many
as seven mil-
of twentieth-century Europe, in which perhaps as lion died.
recalled
A Party activist in the Ukraine, the center of the famine, later
how:
In the terrible spring of 1933 ger. I
I saw people dying from hunsaw women and children with distended bellies, turn-
ing blue,
corpses
still
breathing but with vacant,
—corpses
in
lifeless eyes.
And
ragged sheepskin coats and cheap
felt
Stalin
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
127
snow of the
boots; corpses in peasant-hunts, in the melting
old Vologda, under the bridges of Kharkov.
But he did not lose
I
his faith:
persuaded myself, explained to myself that
in to debilitating pity.
We
I
were performing our revolutionary duty.
convinced that
I
mustn't give
We were realizing historical necessity. .
.
For
.
I
was
was accomplishing the great and necessary
transformation of the countryside, that their distress and suffering
were a
result of their ignorance or the
machinations
of the class enemy. 53
Throughout the Ukrainian famine the OGPU continued to uncover cases of sabotage by "class enemies" and "counterrevolutionary conspirators":
among them
veterinarians accused of decimating livestock,
the entire staff of the Meteorological Office charged with falsifying
weather forecasts,
civil
servants alleged to have
infested seed corn with weeds,
and
collective
damaged
failed to fulfill impossible quotas. Stanislas Kossior, the
secretary (himself later shot in the Great Terror),
"Whole counterrevolutionary
nests were
tractors
farm chairmen
formed
and
who had
Ukrainian
first
announced that
in the People's
Com-
missariats of Education, of Agriculture, of Justice; in the Ukrainian Institute of
chenko
Marxism-Leninism, the Agricultural Academy, the Shev-
Institute, etc."
54
The OGPU's continuing
ability to discover
imaginary rural
saboteurs helped to sustain the gigantic conspiracy theory that increas-
dominated
ingly
Stalin's
world view. Lazar Kaganovich, one of Stalin's
most trusted henchmen and one of the few Politburo members to survive the purges, claimed that kulaks who had survived the deportations, along with White Guards and other counterrevolutionaries, had succeeded in "sabotaging the collection of grain deliveries and sowing."
When
the novelist Mikhail Sholokhov wrote to Stalin in April 1933 to
complain of "the mortal blow delivered to the collective farm econ-
omy"
in the
Don
growers of your
district,
district
Stalin replied that "the
esteemed grain-
(and not only of your district)" had tried to
sabotage the bread supply to the towns and
Red Army:
That the sabotage was quiet and outwardly harmless (without bloodshed) does not change the fact that the esteemed
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
128
grain-growers waged what was virtually a "silent" war against Soviet power.
Sholokhov.
A
war of
starvation, dear
Comrade
55
Despite the preposterous nature of the allegations of sabotage by starving peasants,
impossible to dismiss
it is
them simply as a cynical attempt from the crimes and blunders
to provide scapegoats to divert attention
of the Party leadership. Like the witch finders of an earlier age, Stalin believed his
them
own
conspiracy theories, even
to suit his political purposes.
saboteurs, the
The
if
he
felt free
to
embroider
Apart from finding nonexistent rural
OGPU served two other main functions during the fam-
was to seal off the starving Ukraine from the outside was allowed into the Ukraine. No Ukrainians without special passes were allowed out. The last railway station between Kiev and the Ukrainian-Russian border was occupied by an armed OGPU detachment, which turned back all passengers without permits. Within the Ukraine the OGPU also had to deal with some of the most horrific consequences of the famine. Cannibalism became commonplace, but since cannibals were not covered by the criminal code, they were handed over to the jurisdiction of the OGPU. 56 ine.
first
No
world.
grain
The
OGPU
also helped to prevent
crossing the borders
it
had
One
sealed.
was
"active measures" of the 1930s
news of the famine from
of the most successful Soviet
to persuade
most of the outside
world, as well as gullible Western visitors and journalists actually in the Soviet Union, that one of the worst famines in
more than
Ukraine, spent in tours,
modern
history
was no
a piece of anti-Soviet propaganda. After five days in the official receptions,
Edouard Herriot, the French
banquets, and carefully conducted
radical leader, twice prime minister
of his country, "categorically denied the
about a famine
in the Soviet
lies
of the bourgeois press
Union." After a tour of Potemkin
villages,
Bernard Shaw announced: "I did not see a single under-nourished person in Russia, young or old.
Were
they padded?
Were
their hollow
cheeks distended by pieces of india rubber inside?" The
Times correspondent litzer
in
New
York
Moscow, Walter Duranty, awarded the Pu-
Prize in 1932 for his "dispassionate, interpretive reporting of the
news from Russia," claimed famine
Russia
in
August 1933 that "any report of a
today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda." The gurus of British Fabian socialism, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, in
is
reached the same conclusion after their tours of Russia in 1932 and 1933.
They blamed
the "partial failure of crops" in certain areas on "a
Stalin
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
129
population manifestly guilty of sabotage," and castigated peasants
who
"out of spite" had taken to "rubbing the grain from the ear, or even cutting off the whole ear, and carrying
shameless theft of
The
inevitable consequence of the
it
off for individual hoarding,
property." 57
communal
this
man-made famine
and the savage witch hunts against "class enemies,"
in the
countryside
real or
imagined,
in both town and country was the brutalization of the Soviet Communist Party in general and of the OGPU in particular. "Terror," wrote Bukharin, "was henceforth a normal method of administration, and obedience to any order from above a high virtue." But enough of the original idealism of the Bolshevik revolutionary dream remained for the depravities of the class war to provoke at least a muted protest. The most articulate protest was a letter drafted by a supporter of Bukharin, Mikhail Ryutin, signed by himself and seventeen others, which was circulated to members of the Central Committee on the eve of a meeting of its plenum in autumn 1932. The text of the "Ryutin platform," made public only in 1989, contained such a forthright attack on Stalin and the brutality of the past few years that some Trotskyists who saw the letter wrongly concluded 59 that it was an OGPU provocation. It denounced Stalin as "the evil genius of the Russian Revolution who, activated by vindictiveness and lust for power, has brought the revolution to the edge of the abyss," and 5
demanded
his removal: "It
to tolerate
any longer
is
*1
shameful for proletarian revolutionaries
Stalin's yoke, his arbitrariness, his scorn for the
Party and the laboring masses." 60
The impact of the Ryutin platform on
Stalin
was heightened by
simultaneous evidence of the stirring of the remnants of Trotsky's supporters. In October 1932 the Soviet official and former Trotskyist
Goltsman met Trotsky's son, Sedov, in Berlin, and handed him document entitled "The Economic Situation of the Soviet Union," which was published anonymously in the following month's issue of the Trotskyist Biulletin Oppozitsii. Goltsman also E. S.
a harshly critical
brought a proposal for the formation of a united opposition bloc within the Soviet Union. All that remained by scattered,
now
of the Left Opposition was
demoralized, and increasingly powerless remnants.
Trotsky, not for the
last time,
overestimated the strength of his
But
own me
support in the Soviet Union. "The proposition of the bloc seems to
completely acceptable," he wrote to his son. 61 Stalin had an even more exaggerated view of the Trotskyite menace in the Soviet Union than
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
130
Trotsky himself.
When
in
1936 he accused his political police of being
"four years behind" in "unmasking the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc,*'
mind what he saw as its feebleness in stamping down on both Ryutin platform and Trotsky's supporters in 1932. 62 Stalin was not yet ready to begin the manhunt for the exiled
he had the
in
Trotsky. But he appears to have called for Ryutin's immediate execution.
Despite
OGPU support,
he was voted
down by
a majority on the
Politburo, apparently headed by the Leningrad Party boss, Sergei
The eighteen
Kirov.
signatories of the
Ryutin platform were, however,
expelled from the Party on the nonsensical charge of having attempted to set
up a bourgeois, kulak organization
in particular, the
ground
activity
kulak system in the U.S.S.R. by means of under-
under the fraudulent banner of "Marxism-Leninism."
Zinoviev and Kamenev,
now mere symbols
were also expelled for
sition,
to reestablish capitalism and,
failing to
rather than leaders of oppo-
inform on Ryutin's "counterrev-
olutionary group." 63
At a joint session of the Central Committee and Central ConCommission in January 1933 Stalin argued the case for intensifying the "class struggle": "We must bear in mind that the growth in the power of the Soviet state will intensify the resistance of the last remtrol
nants of the dying classes." Characteristically, he blamed the famine
and other economic problems on sabotage by these "dying classes," some of whom had "even managed to worm their way into the Party."
Once
again, however, Stalin encountered opposition. Central
tee secretary Postyshev
Commit-
argued that there was no longer any point in
using the kulaks as scapegoats for the problems of running large collective farms:
"By shouting
that kulaks, wreckers, officers, Petlyurists
[Ukrainian nationalists] and other such elements disrupt the harvest or sabotage grain-collection,
we
don't change the situation." So
many
speakers criticized the Party's agrarian policy that, for the last time in his
life,
Stalin virtually admitted
said, "to
blame."
A
he had made mistakes.
"We
are," he
Party journal cited his speech as an example of
"Bolshevik self-criticism." 64
Two divergent trends were now apparent within the Party leadership. Stalin
of the
and
OGPU
his lieutenants
were anxious to unleash the
full
force
against the forces of counterrevolution. Others were
anxious to restore "socialist legality." For a time Stalin thought it unwise to resist that trend openly. In May 1933 he accepted the circulation of a secret "instruction," condemning mass repression in the countryside.
A
month
later the office
of procurator of the U.S.S.R. was
Stalin
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
established, with the evident
same time the for the
first
OGPU excesses. Yet at the
aim of limiting
Stalin cult steadily expanded.
tions in 1933 the ceremonial address
At the May Day
Moscow
celebra-
by Marshal Voroshilov referred
time to Stalin as "Leader" (Vozhd).
the October Revolution in
131
On
the anniversary of
Stalin's portraits
outnumbered
65 Lenin's by almost two to one.
Opposition to Stalin resurfaced at the Seventeenth Party Con-
nowadays stated as a fact in the Soviet Union polled almost three hundred votes less than Kirov in the
gress early in 1934.
that Stalin
It is
elections to the Central
Committee. Stalin
lost his title
"general secre-
66 tary" and was referred to simply as "secretary." Party opposition to
however, was so muted that the vast majority of the Russian
Stalin,
population were unaware of its existence. Even today
it
do much more than guess opposition in 1934 was the growing extravagance of the sible to
though
at its
Stalin's
extent.
remains impos-
Far more
visible
than
Stalin cult.
And
domination of the Party was not absolute, his control
of the means of repression continued to increase. In
by
May
1934 the invalid Menzhinsky died and was succeeded
his first deputy,
Yagoda, who for some time had been acting head
was transformed into the GUGB (Main Administration of State Security) and integrated into a reconstituted NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), headed by Yagoda. The political police, regular police, criminal investigation, border troops, internal troops, and, from October 1934, the entire penal system, were thus combined in one body. Though technically only a part of it, the political police was usually referred to as the NKVD. The whole immensely powerful force answered directly to Stalin himself. 67
of the
OGPU.
In July the
OGPU
NKVD
ran through his own personal secretarheaded by A. Poskrebyshev. 68 According to the defector Aleksandr Orlov, Poskrebyshev and Georgi Malenkov headed a "Little Stalin's direct line to the
NKVD
iat
Council," which evaluated Stalin's secretariat also
incoming intelligence for the Politburo. 69
provided the training ground for his protege,
1936 was to succeed Yagoda at the head of the and preside over the Great Terror. 70 The assassination on December 1, 1934, of Kirov, Stalin's main
Nikolai Yezhov,
NKVD
who
all
in
potential rival, led to a further increase in
shot in the back of the neck as he
NKVD powers.
left his office in
Kirov was
the Leningrad Party
headquarters. His deranged assassin, Leonid Nikolayev, imagined himself the successor to the populist assassins of
Tsar Alexander
II.
Re-
markably, Nikolayev had twice previously been caught by Kirov's
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
132
guards approaching him with a loaded revolver in his briefcase, but on each occasion had been released by the Leningrad
NKVD.
Fifty years
no one in the KGB with whom Gordievsky discussed the assassination doubted that the order for Kirov's murder derived from Stalin himself. But it was generally believed that Stalin had bypassed Yagoda, whom he did not fully trust, and had worked instead through the head later
NKVD, Filipp Medved, and his deputy I. ZaporoKhrushchev later concluded, probably incorrectly, that Yagoda was also involved and had received verbal orders from Stalin. of the Leningrad zhets.
71
On
his arrival at
one of the most
Leningrad after Kirov's murder, Stalin gave
brilliant acting
performances of his career.
He
struck
Medved, who had come to meet him at the railway station, with his gloved hand and then appeared overcome with grief on seeing Kirov's corpse. Officially Medved and Zaporozhets were sacked for criminal negligence, but both subsequently reemerged working for the NKVD in the Far East before being shot during the Great Terror in 1937, possibly, as Khrushchev later suggested, "to cover up all the traces of the organizers of Kirov's assassination." 72
A summary ists.
directive
on the evening of Kirov's assassination authorized
action, including the death penalty, against suspected terror-
According to Khrushchev, the directive was issued "without the
approval of the Politburo" on the initiative of Stalin. 73 The acquired, and retained for twenty years, the
those Soviet citizens
found by the
it
NKVD thus
power of life and death over
chose to label "terrorists." The
first
scapegoats
NKVD for Kirov's murder were an alleged conspiracy of
White Guards who had infiltrated Russia across the Polish, Finnish, and Latvian frontiers. One hundred four of the imaginary conspirators were allegedly rounded up and shot. 74 Three weeks after Kirov's death another nonexistent conspiracy was uncovered.
On December 22,
1934,
was announced that Nikolayev belong to an underground terrorist organization set up by the followers of Zinoviev. Stalin noted in his own hand the names of two groups of guilty Zinovievites, who were chris-
it
tened the
"Moscow Center" and
the "Leningrad Center."
It
was
fur-
ther disclosed that Nikolayev had received 5,000 rubles from the Lat-
who provided an alleged between the Zinovievite conspirators and the exiled Trotsky. On December 30 it was announced that, after a brief trial without defense lawyers, the conspirators had been shot. In January 1935 Zinoviev and Kamenev featured in the first vian consul-general (subsequently expelled), link
Stalin
political trial of
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
133
former opposition leaders. Both acknowledged only a
vaguely worded political responsibility for Kirov's murder, which short of actual instigation, and were sentenced five years'
to, respectively,
ten
fell
and
imprisonment. Bizarre though these proceedings were, the
Soviet people
had become so used
cies that they
found them quite plausible. 75 After the
moned Yagoda and
told
him,
to revelations of plots
and conspira-
trial Stalin
sum-
"You're working badly, Genrikh
Grigoryevich!" Zinoviev and Kamenev, he insisted, should have been
made a full confession. Yagoda was so shaken by when he recounted it to his deputy Georgi Prokoviev
tortured until they the meeting that
he burst into
tears.
76
During 1935 sive onslaught
Stalin laid the foundations for a
on actual or potential opposition to
1933 and continued during 1934, had
at rooting out
corruption and inefficiency. In 1935
became both more murder of Comrade Kirov,"
the purge
sinister
and more
said Stalin later,
political.
result of detailed inquisition, since, in the
"lying, political Jesuitry 77
evil
removed as the
words of a Party spokesman,
and double-dealing are the basic
Every
"The
had revealed "many
suspect elements within the Party." These could only be
Party's enemies."
A
in
purge of Party members, begun been aimed chiefly
much more mashis leadership.
local Party organization
tactics of the
began a campaign of
confession and self-criticism. "Big, packed halls," writes Evgenia Ginsburg, "were turned into confessionals":
Every meeting had
its
soupe du jour. People repented for
incorrect understanding of the theory of tion
and
for abstention in the vote
permanent revolu-
on the opposition platform
of 1932; for an "eruption" of great-power chauvinism and for
undervaluation of the second Five- Year Plan; for acquaintance with certain "sinners" and for infatuation with Meyerhold's theatre. 78
became increasingly obsessed with one great opponent beyond Leon Trotsky. One of the standard questions put by NKVD interrogators while taking political confessions was: "Do you agree or do you not that Trotsky is the chief of the vanguard of bourgeois counterrevolution?" Most of those expelled from the Party were branded as Trotskyites and Zinovievists. To Trotsky in his lonely exile this was vastly encouraging news. He wrote in January 1936: Stalin
his reach,
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
134
Among
the 10 to 20,000 "Trotskyites" expelled in the last
months there are no more than a few
perhaps a few
tens,
hundreds ... of men of the older generation, oppositionists
The mass
of the 1923-8 vintages.
...
is
made up
of new recruits.
can be said with confidence that in spite of thirteen
It
years of baiting, slander and persecution, unsurpassed in
wickedness and savagery, in spite of capitulations and defections,
more dangerous than
persecution, the [Trotskyist]
Fourth International possesses already today
most numerous, and most hardened branch
Both
Stalin
and Trotsky now inhabited,
its
strongest,
in the U.S.S.R.
at least intermittently, a
79
world
of make-believe in which each fed the other's fantasies. Stalin's belief in
mostly nonexistent Russian Trotskyists infected Trotsky, whose
pleasure at discovering these imaginary followers in turn persuaded
menace was even worse than he had supposed. Trotskyists had disappeared from view within the Soviet Union was simply that, with very few exceptions, they had in fact disappeared. Stalin and most of the NKVD, however, Stalin that the Trotskyist
The
real reason
why
believed that their apparent disappearance merely demonstrated that
they had gone underground, often posing deceitfully as loyal party
members. In the summer of 1936 a tion,
passed on Stalin's
ers to destroy all
sent in the alone,
name
warned
all
initiative,
secret Central
gave the
Committee
resolu-
NKVD extraordinary pow-
"enemies of the people." 80 In July a secret circular, of the Politburo but possibly authorized by Stalin
Party organizations:
Now that it has been demonstrated that Trotskyist-Zinovievite
monsters are uniting
in a struggle against Soviet
power
all
the most embittered and sworn enemies of the toilers of our
country
—
kulaks,
etc.;
spies,
now
provocateurs, that
all
saboteurs,
White Guards,
distinctions have been erased be-
tween these elements on the one hand and the Trotskyists and Zinovievites on the other all our Party organizations,
—
members of the Party, must understand that the vigilance of Communists is required in any sector and in every situation. The inalienable quality of every Bolshevik in current conditions must be to know how to discover an enemy of the all
Party,
however well he
is
disguised.
Stalin
A
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
135
campaign over the next few weeks revealed that, "thanks to corrupt liberalism and a blunting of vigilance on the part of some Communists," there were still "Trotskyist-Zinovievite degenerates" in press
Party ranks. 81
The trial of the main "degenerates" opened on August 19. Kamenev, and their associates now confessed what they had
Zinoviev,
been allowed to deny
in
January 1935: that they were the "direct
organizers" of Kirov's assassination and had intended his murder as the
Communist leaders, including means of overthrowing the Soviet regime. Since 1932 they had acted on (nonexistent) instructions from Trotsky, con-
prelude to the assassination of other Stalin himself, as a
veyed through (equally nonexistent) secret agents.
One
of the accused
described a meeting with Trotsky's son at a hotel in Copenhagen that
turned out to have been pulled
imaginary crimes rorist
all
the
down twenty
members of
years earlier. For such
the "Trotskyite-Zinovievite Ter-
Center" were sentenced to death. Their public confessions
marked an important stage in the elaboration of a vast conspiracy theory, which in its final form fused together all the opponents of Stalinism, both at home and abroad, into one stupendous plot. The trial identified the remnants of the Left Opposition inside Russia not merely with the exiled Trotsky but also with the White Guards and fascism. The "Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center," it was revealed, "sank definitively into the swamp of white-guardism," merged with it, and "became the organizing force of the last remnants of the exploiting classes which had been routed in the U.S.S.R." They had also collaborated with the Gestapo, with whom Trotsky had agreed on a joint terrorist campaign against the Soviet regime. In his final plea Zinoviev defined the relationship between his own supporters and the forces of Nazism and international fascism in an elegantly simple, if improbable, formula: "Trotskyism is a variety of fascism and Zinovievism
is
a variety of Trotskyism." 82
To
Stalin's satisfaction, the trial also implicated the
of the "Right Opposition": Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky.
remnants
Tomsky
took the hint and committed suicide. But while Stalin was on his annual holiday at Sochi in mid-September, he received the unwelcome news that
Bukharin and Rykov had been cleared
tion. All Stalin's old suspicions
Basking
in his recent
in the
an
NKVD investiga-
about Yagoda welled to the surface. 83
promotion to the rank of General Commissar of
State Security (the equivalent of marshal)
ment
after
and the award of an apart-
Kremlin, Yagoda overestimated the strength of his posi-
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
136
tion,
gave free rein to his growing vanity, and ordered public changing
of the
NKVD On
guard with neo-Tsarist music and ceremonial. 84
September 25 nemesis arrived
and
the Politburo from Stalin
his protege
form of a telegram to
in the
Andrei Zhdanov demanding
Yagoda's replacement by Nikolai Yezhov: "Yagoda has
definitely
proved himself to be incapable of unmasking the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc.
The
OGPU is four years behind in this matter": a clear reference
to the allegedly
weak response
to the "counterrevolutionary"
Ryutin
platform and Trotskyite menace of 1932. 85 Stalin probably already intended to launch a
NKVD
but decided for the
moment
to lull
its
Yagoda and
sense of security by removing only
major purge of the
leadership into a false his
deputy Georgi
Prokoviev. For the time being, neither was executed or imprisoned.
commissar and deputy commissar
Instead, they became, respectively,
of Communications. Yagoda's successor, the diminutive, boyish-looking Yezhov,
was the
first
ethnic Russian to head the
KGB. As secretary
of the Central Committee and head of the Party Control Commission,
Yezhov had been in effect supervising the NKVD on Stalin's behalf for some time. Within the Party apparatus he had created a security staff parallel to the NKVD itself; this staff had probably planned Kirov's assassination, also at Stalin's behest.
Yezhov had taken part
in the preparations for the trial of the
"Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center," even setting up an office in
Lubyanka and taking part in the interrogations as Party representative in charge of security. He showed particular interest in the methods used to extract confessions from those prisoners who put up most resistance and would always ask the interrogators "what, in their opinion, was the last straw that broke the prisoner's back." Yezhov took personal pride in reducing one tough Old Bolshevik to tears by threat-
the
ening his children.
One
Yezhov's triumph said a villain as Yezhov.
of the
later:
He
does
welcomed Yezhov's presence
NKVD my
"In it
life I
who
witnessed
have never seen such
with pleasure." Yagoda cannot have
in the
dulled by the honors heaped on
interrogators
whole
Lubyanka, but
him
in 1936, his
his suspicions
were
growing vanity, and
the expectation of a place in the Politburo. 86
Under Yezhov
all
the restraints that had hindered the liquida-
tion of Stalin's imaginary enemies
usually Soviet
known Union
in the
West
were removed. The next two years,
remembered in the The next show trial, in January
as the Great Terror, are
as the Yezhovshchina.
1937, featured Pyatakov, Radek,
and
fifteen
other imaginary traitors.
Stalin
It
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
137
purported to reveal that, in addition to the "Trotskyite-Zinovievite
Terrorist Center"
had
unmasked
show
at the
trial in
also established a "reserve center,"
August 1936, Trotsky
known
as the "Anti-Soviet
"reserve center" was found guilty of conspiring with
The second "enemy of the
people L. Trotsky" and "certain representatives of
Germany and
Trotsky ite Center," in case the
first
center was discovered.
and to restore power of the bourgeoisie by means of wrecking, diversion, espionage, and terrorist activities designed to undermine the economic and military power of the Soviet Union, to expedite the armed attack on the U.S.S.R., to assist foreign aggressors and to bring
Japan" "to overthrow the Soviet power
in the U.S.S.R.
capitalism and the
about the defeat of the U.S.S.R."
The Nazi regime and a
much
its
intelligence service played, in absentia,
greater part in the case against the "Anti-Soviet Trotskyite
Center" than in the previous show
appeared for the
first
trial.
The Japanese government
time as a major conspirator. Trotsky,
claimed, had promised the Ukraine to
Provinces and the in
Germany and
it
also
was
the Maritime
Amur region to Japan as a reward for their assistance
overthrowing the Soviet regime. The "Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Cen-
ter"
had regularly supplied both the German and Japanese
intelligence
services with secret intelligence "of the utmost state importance,"
preparations for even
more
extensive wartime sabotage, including bac-
teriological warfare "with the object of
army On March
canteens and
contaminating troop
trains,
centers with highly virulent bacilli." 87 18,
1937,
Yezhov revealed an even more
dimension of the imaginary counterrevolutionary conspiracy ing in the
had
made
organized widespread peacetime sabotage on their behalf, and
NKVD officers' club.
By
startling
at a
meet-
the time his apprehensive audience
assembled, some of Yagoda's leading department chiefs were already in prison,
having been sent on train journeys ostensibly to carry out
regional inspections, only to be arrested at the
first
railway station
Moscow. The conspiracy, explained Yezhov, had penetrated the very heart of the NKVD. The chief traitor was Yagoda himself. After working for the Okhrana, Yagoda had been recruited by the German secret service and used by them to penetrate the Cheka. By the time of his dismissal, he had planted spies in every key position in the NKVD, some of whom were already under arrest. Yezhov's audience applauded a speech that most of them knew outside
to be rubbish.
According to Walter Krivitsky, a senior
defected later in the year:
INO officer who
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
138
They applauded
A
Who knows? them from a bullet Perhaps they might once more
to demonstrate their devotion.
timely confession might yet save
through the base of the brain.
buy the
right to live
by betraying their closest
friends.
was Artuzov, who saw an opportunity to Slutsky, who had replaced him as head of INO in 1934. Artuzov began by confessing their collective "blindness" in failing to discover Yagoda's treachery, and allowing him "to set the OGPU against the Party." He gave as an example OGPU support for Yagoda's attempts to freeze out Stalin's protege Akulov in 1932: "I must say frankly the entire Party organization in the OGPU was devoted to sabotaging Akulov." Then Artuzov moved to the offensive: "I ask you who was head of the Party Organization in the OGPU at that
The
first
to take the floor
revenge himself on
time?"
He
Abram
paused for dramatic
effect,
then shouted, "Slutsky!" 88
Slutsky was caught off guard and stumbled at to defend himself.
Then he discovered a promising
first
as he tried
line of counter-
attack:
I
ask you, Artuzov, where did you live?
Who
lived opposite
And is he not now among the first batch arrested? And who lived just above you, Artuzov? Ostrovsky? He too is arrested. And who lived just beneath you, Artuzov? Yagoda! And now I ask you, comrades, who, you? Bulanov?
under prevailing conditions, could have lived in the same house with Yagoda without enjoying his absolute confidence? 89
Artuzov was soon arrested and shot. So, within the next year, were most of Yagoda's department heads. 90 The main exception was Slutsky,
who was spared for a time so that INO officers serving abroad who were Moscow in the mistaken
selected for liquidation could be lured back to belief that their
department was to be spared. By February 1938 he had
He was invited to the office of Yezhov's deputy, Mikhail Frinovsky, given tea and cakes, and expired on the spot, al-
outlived his usefulness.
legedly from a heart attack. Experienced
NKVD officers who attended
Slutsky's lying-in-state are reported to have noticed
on his face the produced by hydrocyanic acid. An official obituary "comrades in work," described Slutsky as a "fearless
characteristic spots
signed by his
fighter for the cause of the
working
class
.
.
.
Chekists
knew
his
name
Stalin
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
to the ends of our broad fatherland.
139
Enemies feared that name." 91
Unlike his predecessors, Trilisser and Artuzov, however, Slutsky's pordoes not appear on the wall of the
trait
The next
FCD Memory
Room. 92
great imaginary conspiracy to be uncovered by Ye-
On
zhov involved the Red Army.
Marshal Tukhachevsky, hero of the
June Civil
11
it
was announced
War and
that
the Soviet Union's
leading military thinker, had been arrested with seven other generals,
on a charge of treason. All were
shot, probably the next day.
Marshal
Voroshilov reported that the traitors had "admitted their treacherousness,
wrecking and espionage." They had,
it
was
later revealed,
been
with both Trotsky and Nazi Germany. Preposterous though
in league
these allegations were, Stalin and
Yezhov were possessed by such para-
noid fears of counterrevolutionary conspiracy that they seem genuinely to
have feared a military coup. Frinovsky, Yezhov's second-in-com-
mand, told Krivitsky: "We've just uncovered a gigantic conspiracy in the Army, such a conspiracy as history has never known. And we've just
now
learned of a plot to
kill
Nikolai Ivanovich [Yezhov] himself!
We've got everything under control." 93 The deputy head of INO, Mikhail Shpigelglas, gave much the same version But we've got them
all.
of events to another future defector, Aleksandr Orlov:
That was a
real conspiracy!
That could be seen from the
panic which spread there on the top:
Kremlin were suddenly declared held in a state of alarm. Soviet
As Frinovsky
Government hung by a
act as in
normal times
In this case
we had
—
first
thread.
the
trial
to shoot first
the passes to the
all
invalid;
It
our troops were
"The whole was impossible to said:
and then the shooting.
and
try later."
94
It later emerged that the Gestapo had tried to exploit Stalin's paranoia by planting forged documents in Czechoslovakia that appeared to show a plot by Tukhachevsky to carry out a coup d'etat with German sup-
port.
The Gestapo
plot,
however, was unnecessary. Stalin had decided
to liquidate the imaginary military plot even before his attention
Germans,
it
was brought
to
by President Benes of Czechoslovakia. Unprompted by the
Stalin
and Yezhov decimated the Red
Army
high
command
with a thoroughness that must have exceeded the Gestapo's wildest hopes. 95
be
The total number of victims of the Yezhovshchina may never known with certainty. In response to a secret request from the
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
140
Politburo in 1956, the
KGB
produced a figure of about 19 million
arrests for the period 1935 to 1940, of
or died in the gulag.
The
whom at least 7 million were shot
real death toll
was probably higher
still.
96
By
a macabre irony, the most dangerous "enemies of the people" were
who
discovered in the three institutions
shared responsibility for de-
Red Army, and the members of the Central Commit-
fending the Soviet state against them: the Party, the
NKVD. One hundred
ten of the 139
1934 Party Congress were shot or imprisoned. Only
tee elected at the
59 of the 1,966 delegates reappeared at the next Congress in 1939.
members of the Supreme Military Council were Red Army officer corps, probably well over men, were executed or imprisoned. The NKVD hierarchy was 35,000
Seventy-five of the 80 shot.
More than
half the
1 8 of Yagoda's commissars of state security, grades and 2, were shot (save for Slutsky, who was probably poisoned) under Yezhov. Of Yezhov's top 122 officers in 1937-38, only 21 still held
purged twice. All 1
office
under his successor
in 1940.
97
The Yezhovshchina destroyed most
of what remained of the idealism of the early Chekist leadership, con-
new
and hand the change in NKVD interrogators was the writer Nadezhda Mandelstam, wife of the persecuted poet Osip Mandelstam: vinced that their brutality was necessary to build a
One
defeat counterrevolution.
The
first
who
witnessed at
society
first
generation of young Chekists, later to be removed
and destroyed tastes
of those
in 1937,
and weakness
able, of course. In
[Osip] that
it
yourself told
was distinguished by
for literature
my
was useful
me
its
sophisticated
—only the most
fashion-
presence Christophorovich said to for a poet to experience fear
so") because
he would "experience fear
it
("you
can inspire verse, and that
in full
measure."
Mandelstam died in a labor camp. Christophorovich, the interrogator, was shot. 98 His successors were men of little culture and less idealism. Within the
NKVD,
as within the Party, the conditions of the Terror
led to the survival of the morally unfittest, those
themselves by denouncing others. The teams of stationed around the gulag ing
when
commonly became
most willing
NKVD
alcoholics.
to save
executioners
Each morn-
they collected their automatics from the guardroom they were
each given a glass of vodka. Then they loaded the day's victims onto trucks, drove
them
them up and
started shooting:
to a pit
dug by a team of criminal
convicts, lined
Stalin
Some were
[silent],
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
141
others started crying out that they were
good Communists, that they were dying innocent, and so on. But the In
some
and
women
places
tried to see
only cried and huddled closer together.
NKVD
marksmen lined up the how many they could kill with a
prisoners sideways single bullet.
Then
the execution squads returned to camp, put their automatics back in the guardroom, were given as
and
much
free
vodka as they could drink,
slept."
The
victims of the
A
NKVD included foreign as well as Russian
officials and foreign ComMoscow were unmasked as "enemy agents" or "foreign spies" and shot. Those who were most vulnerable were the members of illegal Communist parties and their families, who had lost
Communists.
majority of the Comintern
munists resident
in
the protection of foreign nationality. foreign
jails,
where,
it
was
Most had spent some time in had
alleged, that capitalist secret services
them as agents. The two illegal foreign parties with the largest number of imaginary spies among their exiled leadership were the Poles and the Yugoslavs. The Polish Communists were most suspect of all: recruited
their leaders
were Jewish and had taken Trotsky's side
at the
time of
Lenin's death. All were shot. Manuilsky told the 1939 Soviet Party
Congress:
In order to disrupt the
Communist movement,
Trotskyite spies attempted to form
artificial
the Fascist-
"factions" and
some of the Communist parties and to stir up Most contaminated by hostile elements was the Communist Party of Poland, where agents of Polish fascism managed to gain positions of leadership. "groups"
in
a factional struggle.
Stalin
was almost
whose
first
Yugoslav Communist Party, Sima Markovic, had challenged his views on the nationality question in 1925. Ironically, the only leading Yugoslav as suspicious of the
leader,
Communist whom
Stalin trusted
was the arch-heretic of the postwar
Soviet bloc, Josip Broz, alias Tito,
In 1938,
when
I
was
in
who
later recalled:
Moscow ... we were
discussing
whether to dissolve the Yugoslav Communist Party. All the
Yugoslav leaders
at that
time in the Soviet Union had been
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
142
was alone, the party was weakened, without and I was there alone. 100
arrested; ership;
The
I
lead-
of the extent of the imaginary international coun-
final revelation
came in February members of the "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites," chief among them Bukharin, Rykov, and Yagoda, accused of an expanded version of what had become the usual terrevolutionary conspiracy against Stalinist Russia
1938 with the show
trial
of twenty-one
catalogue of Trotskyite crimes: espionage, wrecking, terrorism, and preparations for foreign invasion, the dismemberment of the U.S.S.R., the overthrow of the Soviet system, and the restoration of capitalism.
Previously the Trotskyites had been allegedly conspiring only with the
German and Japanese
secret services;
now
they were accused of work-
ing for British and Polish intelligence as well. Trotsky himself
revealed as a
Yagoda had
German
some time been "surrounded
for
was
agent since 1921 and a British agent since 1926. as with
flies
with German,
Japanese and Polish spies."
The
last
show
trial
had disclosed that Trotsky and the assorted
counterrevolutionaries under his leadership had promised the Ukraine to
Germany and
russia to
the Maritime Provinces and
Amur
region to Japan.
was revealed that they had also promised ByeloPoland and Uzbekistan to Britain. Trotskyite terrorism too
In February 1938
it
turned out to be even more devious and extensive than previously supposed. Not content with assisting in Kirov's assassination,
Yagoda
had pioneered "wrecking methods of medicine" and arranged the poisoning of his predecessor Menzhinsky, the great writer Maxim Gorky, and the chairman of the State Planning Commission V. V. Kuybyshev. He had also begun to poison Yezhov himself but had been caught in the nick of time. 101
The most important novelty at the trial of the
in the conspiracy theory unveiled
"Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites" was the height-
ened emphasis given to the role of Western governments and their intelligence services. ies
The
Trotskyites were no longer the mere auxiliar-
of foreign secret services but their "slaves,"
masters."
The
state procurator,
"bondmen of
peroration:
The "Block of grouping; services.
it is
Rightists
their
Andrei Vyshinsky, declared during
and Trotskyites"
is
no
political
a gang of spies, of agents of foreign intelligence
This has been proved fully and incontestably.
his
Stalin
Herein
lies
the
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
enormous
nificance of the present
Ever since the Shakhty
trial
social, political
143
and
historical sig-
trial.
ten years before, the role of foreign intelli-
gence services in plotting the overthrow of the Soviet system had
loomed final
steadily larger in Stalinist
and
NKVD conspiracy theory.
The
version of that conspiracy theory backdated the dominant role
played by "the devilish work of the foreign intelligence services" in
all
counterrevolutionary activity to the origins of the Soviet state:
The
entire history of bourgeois counterrevolution in the
U.S.S.R.
is
linked up with the active attempts of the most
reactionary circles of the international bourgeoisie to over-
throw the power of the
more
Soviets.
There has not been a single
power
or less serious plot against the Soviet
in the
U.S.S.R. without the direct and most active participation of foreign capitalists
Among
those
who
and military
attended the
cliques.
trial
102
of the "Bloc of Rightists and
Trotskyites" was Sir Fitzroy Maclean, then a young British diplomat at the
Moscow
maneuvered arc
embassy. At one point during the light illuminated a private
courtroom and Maclean saw, to
box
trial
at the
his astonishment, the
tache and yellowish complexion of Stalin himself. 103
a clumsily
back of the
drooping mus-
Though
not, of course, supervise every detail of the Terror or even
names of most of
Stalin did
know
the
was nonetheless the directing hand. Gordievsky's father and other KGB veterans told him how from the death of Kirov onward Stalin used to receive late each evening first Yagoda, then Yezhov. The nightly meetings with Yezhov not uncommonly lasted from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. 104 Stalin took an obsessional perits
victims, his
sonal interest not merely in the persecution of the major figures in the
NKVD, and armed services, but also in the numbers of more humble "enemies of the people" being unmasked. His most trusted Party,
subordinates, such as Lazar Kaganovich, toured the provinces to
make
sure that local quotas for such "unmaskings" were being fulfilled or overfulfilled.
While the Great Terror was at its height Stalin was never with the numbers reported to him. The head of the militia in the Ivanovo region, Mikhail Shreider, later recalled one such visit of inspection by Kaganovich in 1937. Throughout his stay Kaganovich
satisfied
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
144
telephoned Stalin several times a day to report on the numbers of
NKVD
was already using what Shreider from imaginary enemies of the people, after each phone call Kaganovich insisted on speedier confessions. On one occasion Kaganovich phoned Stalin in Shreider's presence to report the latest number of arrests. Stalin, as usual, was dissatisfied, and Shreider heard Kaganovich repeating over and over
Though
arrests.
the local
called "severe tortures" to extract confessions
again:
"Will do, comrade Stalin. I'll press on the NKVD department heads not to be too liberal and to increase to the maxi-
mum
identification of
enemies of the people." 105
"Enemies of the people" with foreign connections were likely to have were spies as well. Many years later Gordievsky still
to confess that they
in the KGB archives. One fairly memory early in his career was the German Communist named Sturm, who had wandered half
occasionally
file
came
across their
example that lodged
typical
on a
files
in his
starved from the Ukraine to the Volga in 1937.
up
in
Kuybyshev begging
wearily confessed to being a
The Terror
The
NKVD picked him
for bread. After a few interrogations, he
German
spy and was shot. 106
inevitably acquired a
momentum
of
its
,
own. The
requirement that imaginary "enemies of the people" identify their equally imaginary collaborators, as well as the that surrounded their friends
and
1937-38 something approaching a geometrical progression.
arrests in
The prime mover of the Terror and it
more general suspicion
relatives, built into the pattern of
as pervasive as possible, however,
any compunction
was necessary
in allowing the
to give the
show
the
was
man most
concerned to make
Stalin himself. Stalin never
had
manufacture of whatever evidence
trials
the
maximum dramatic effect. But
both he and Yezhov undoubtedly believed in the vast conspiracy theory
on which the
trials
were based. Underlying the preposterous claims of
a combined assault by imperialist secret services and their Trotskyite hirelings
was an impeccable Leninist
during the fied his
trial
conspiracy theory in Lenin's
We
logic.
In an open letter published
of the "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites," Stalin justi-
own
words:
are living not only in a State, but in a system of States,
and the existence of the Soviet Republic imperialist States
is
in the long
side
by side with
run unthinkable. In the end
Stalin
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
one or the other
either
will
145
triumph. But until that end
comes, a series of the most terrible clashes between the Soviet
Republic and bourgeois States
remember
that
we
unavoidable.
is
.
.
We
.
must
are always within a hairsbreadth of
invasion.
It
was, claimed Stalin,
"absurd and stupid" to suppose that the
would not attack whenever they saw a
U.S.S.R.'s external enemies
favorable opportunity: "This could only be thought by blind braggarts or concealed enemies of the people." lin's
107
Those who disagreed with
Sta-
conspiratorial world view were thus identified as "enemies of the
people." Starting from Leninist premises,
it
was impossible
for the
imperialists not to attempt the overthrow of the world's only worker-
peasant
state.
And
if
they were plotting
its
overthrow,
it
conceivable that their intelligence services were not hard at to subvert
To denounce
it.
acy theory
As
it
the basis,
was necessary
if
to attack
was barely work trying
not the detail, of Stalin's conspir-
Leninism
itself.
Lenin's reaction to the "Lockhart plot" twenty years earlier
had shown,
his
manichean vision of a world divided between bourgeois
darkness and Bolshevik light rendered him continuously susceptible to
A
collection of
twentieth
anniversary
attacks of conspiracy theory.
mark "the
NKVD"
in
glorious
documents published of the
to
Cheka-OGPU-
December 1937 quoted Lenin's own warnings
against the
counterrevolutionaries' "organized treachery in our rear," "sabotage of
food production which threatens millions of people with starvation,"
and "extensive organization for espionage." Lenin called for "urgent measures" to uncover the "countless conspiracies" hatched by an unholy alliance of White Russian emigres and foreign imperialists:
"We
have no answer other than the answer of an organization [the Cheka]
which knows the conspirator's every step and which would not try to reason but would punish immediately." 108 But Lenin would never have succumbed to the wilder excesses of Stalinist wrecker mania and spy fever.
He
described
it
as "laughable to say that foreigners
who
will
be
assigned to administer certain trade concessions are dangerous or that
we
will not
be able to keep an eye on them." 109 Almost
at the Stalinist
show
trials
all
the charges
would have been inconceivable
in Lenin's
lifetime.
Stalin's
Russia was more susceptible to conspiracy theory than
Lenin's for two reasons. First, twenty years of socialism in one country
and
capitalist encirclement
had bred an acute sense of insecurity. The
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
146
early hopes of exporting the Revolution abroad
had given way to a
preoccupation with the problems of defending the Revolution at home.
"Help from the international proletariat," said Stalin of February 1938, "must be combined with our work
in his
open
letter
to strengthen the
Red Army and Navy,
defenses of our country, to strengthen the
to
mobilize the entire country for the fight against military attack and against attempts to restore bourgeois relations."
110
The spy mania of the Stalin years also derived from what Khrushchev called Stalin's own "sickly suspicious" personality. "Everywhere and in everything he saw 'enemies,' 'two-facers' and
m The widow of Aleksandr ("Sasha") Kosarev, secretary of Komsomol, later recalled her husband's final meeting with Stalin at a 'spies.'
"
Kremlin banquet: Stalin not only clinked his glass but
him. Returning to his
me
"Let's go
home."
He
replied:
so upset.
When we left, I "When Stalin kissed me, he
ear, 'If you're a traitor,
you.'
I'll kill
Kosarev was shot a few months gist
embraced and kissed and agitated, said to asked him why he was
seat, Sasha, pale
later.
112
said in
my
"
The
greatest Soviet psycholo-
of the interwar period, Vladimir Bechterev, concluded as early as
1927 that Stalin was a paranoid schizophrenic, and appears to have paid with his
life
for his diagnosis.
A
conference of leading Soviet psychia-
113 Unlike 1989, however, rejected that diagnosis as too simple.
trists in
truly paranoid personalities Stalin retained a capacity for cool,
ous, calculation
and an
instinctive sense of timing.
But
it is
if
devi-
difficult
not
to detect at least a paranoid strain in Stalin's "sickly suspicious" personality.
Yezhov inhabited the same
conspiratorial universe as Stalin
himself. In private as well as in public he insisted that foreign intelli-
gence services had mounted "a
enemies of all
NKVD
filthy network of intrigue in which had combined as one." 114 He told a meeting of senior that there were bound to be "some innocent victims"
flags
officers
in "the fight against fascist agents": "Better than ten innocent people
should suffer than one spy get away." 115 Yezhov lived in continual fear of assassination from traitors within the
NKVD.
heavily guarded office in the Lubyanka, even
In order to reach his
NKVD
officers
had
to
take the elevator to the fifth floor, walk through a series of long corridors, go
down
a staircase to the
first floor,
walk along more corridors,
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
Stalin
and take another elevator
to
147
Yezhov's secretariat on the third
floor.
Their papers were checked at frequent intervals along the circuitous route.
116
Yezhov may
well have believed, as
was alleged
at the trial of
Yagoda had
the "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites," that
tried to
poison him. Stalin too took elaborate precautions against poison plots.
He had
a female servant
whose
sole function
was
to
make
tea
from
sealed packets kept in a locked cabinet opened only in the presence of
an
NKVD security guard. One day the guard discovered a broken seal
maker was carted off to the Lubyanka. 117 Most of the Soviet population accepted the official doctrine that they were threatened by a major conspiracy of spies and wreckers in the pay of foreign secret services. At every factory NKVD officers
and the
tea
lectured workers on the danger from imperialist agents in their midst.
Almost every
Many
of spies.
NKVD,
film,
comedies included, contained
its
obligatory quota
of the imaginary spies and wreckers apprehended by the
particularly at the beginning of the Yezhovshchina, believed
that though they themselves were the victim of
some
terrible
mistake
("If only Stalin knew!"), other enemies of the people were guilty as
charged. Old inhabitants of the gulag became so used to hearing this
complaint from new arrivals that they accused them
same gramophone
record.
118
all
of playing the
Even those who grasped the bogus nature
of the show-trial confessions
commonly
believed that the defendants
were "objectively guilty." Party militants often took every word literally. Evgenia Ginsburg records that a woman she knew exclaimed when the
NKVD "So he
came
to arrest her
lied to
husband
me? So he was
in 1937:
really against the Party all the
time."
With an amused
grin the agent said: "Better get his things
together."
But she refused to do this for an enemy of the Party, and when her husband went to his sleeping child's cot to kiss him good-bye she barred his way.
"My
child has
no father." 119
Such simple-minded fanaticism
many
is
less baffling
than the credulity of
The American ambassador JoDepartment that the show trials had
well-educated foreign observers.
seph Davies reported to the State provided "proof
.
.
.
beyond reasonable doubt to
justify the verdict of
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
148
guilty of treason."
The award-winning New York Times correspondent
Walter Duranty concluded that "The future historian
will
probably
accept the Stalinist version." Sir Bernard Pares, then Britain's best-
known Russian
historian,
found the verbatim reports of the show
trials
"The plea that Stalin acted first to disrupt a potential fifth by no means unwarranted." The Webbs thought the defendants were "behaving naturally and sensibly, as Englishmen would were they not virtually compelled by their highly artificial legal system to go through a routine which is useful to the accused only when there is some doubt as to the facts or as to the guilt or innocence of the conduct in question." 120 Such gullibility did not die with Stalin. "impressive":
column ...
is
For many
in the
NKVD
who
survived the Terror or were
recruited to replace their liquidated predecessors, the primary
numbed
simply to survive. Their minds
aim was
or brutalized by their work,
they preferred not to reflect deeply on the purpose of the horrors they
were perpetrating. Most, however, accepted the
reality of the
imaginary
conspiracy they were fighting. Mikhail Gorokhov, an engineer joined the
NKVD
1938, found
in
most of the new
who
recruits "Party
members, simple boys, who have been told that 'enemies of the Socialist society' try to wreck our Soviet system and kill our leaders and that these wreckers
must be exterminated." Early in their training he and watched impassively the torture of a peasant, believ-
his fellow recruits
ing
it
essential to
defector Viktor
uncover his part in the conspiracy. 121 The future
Kravchenko was
NKVD that the Terror had been
told
by an old childhood friend
in the
"absolutely necessary ... to free the
country from traitors and spies": "If you
fell
into our hands,
it
certainly
wouldn't be without reason." 122
The
old guard in the
helps to explain
why
so
NKVD
many
were
less naive.
That, no doubt,
of them were liquidated. But even the
survivors of the Dzerzhinsky era
became confused about the reality of The widow
the "spies" and "wreckers" they were ordered to unmask.
of the murdered
NKVD defector Ignace Poretsky (alias Ignace Reiss)
remembered Abram Slutsky, head of INO from 1934 to 1938, as "a likeable and mild-mannered man" who did his best to save some of the victims of the Terror. But:
many contradictions. We knew of when he interceded courageously to save
Slutsky was a person of cases, after 1936,
someone from
arrest,
interrogation of
and he would weep while
some of
telling of the
the defendants at the trials and
Stalin
bemoan
and Spy Mania (1926-38)
the fate of their families; yet in the
149
same breath he
could denounce them as 'Trotskyite fascists." 123
The
Stalinist
witch hunt against spies and wreckers faced Slutsky and
most who thought
They knew cent.
that
like
him
in the
NKVD with an insoluble dilemma.
most of the victims of the Yezhovshchina were inno-
But as good Leninists they were bound to accept that Soviet
Russia was menaced with a permanent conspiracy by world capitalism,
whose
secret services
were necessarily seeking to subvert
it.
In reality
the only dangerous anti-Soviet conspiracies organized by foreign
gence services during the 1930s were the attempts by
Japan to exploit the paranoia of Stalin and the
intelli-
Germany and
NKVD by encouraging
more imaginary conspiracies. The intelligence service that did most damage in prewar Russia was the NKVD itself. Slutsky and the old guard in INO, though they grasped some of what was going on, could do little about it. They were intellectually as well them
as
to believe in yet
physically
was no escape.
trapped by their ideology inside a confrom which, without renouncing Leninism, there
powerless:
spiratorial universe
5 "Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)
The
secret history of the
KGB
First Chief Directorate, prepared in
1980 to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of INO, records that until the early 1930s the
OGPU's main
foreign target
remained the White Guard movement centered on the headquarters of the
ROVS
(Russian Combined Services Union) in Paris.
priority of the
OGPU
1
The
chief
residency established in Paris at the beginning
of 1925, following French diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union,
was the surveillance against, the
of,
and the development of "active measures"
ROVS. The ROVS was an increasingly soft target.
head,
Its
General Kutepov, calculated that though 90 percent of the White Russian diaspora of about
two million remained "healthy
remaining 10 percent had become disillusioned. figures,
On
patriots," the
Kutepov's
own
30,000 of the 300,000 White Russians in France, demoralized
by homesickness, the privations of exile, and concern for relatives Soviet Union, had become possible targets for the OGPU. But, despite the lesson of the Trust,
in the
Kutepov was curiously
naive about the danger of Soviet penetration of his entourage. There
were
OGPU
agents even within the White
among them Admiral Krylov, who seems
career in the Soviet navy; General Monkevitz,
150
Guard high command,
to have
hoped
to
resume
his
who staged a fake suicide
"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)
151
November 1926 to conceal his flight to the Soviet Union; and Kute2 pov's own former chief of staff during the Civil War, General Steifon. in
OGPU penetration was used not merely for intelligence gatherWhite Russian community. The revewas arranged so as to cause maximum
ing but also for destabilizing the lation of the Trust deception
damage
to
Kutepov's
credibility.
Grand Duke Nicholas,
the Tsar's
cousin, confessed to his intimates his "profound disappointment" with
Kutepov. General Wrangel urged him to abandon
all
attempts to orga-
nize a secret anti-Bolshevik conspiracy within the Soviet Union. But
Kutepov was not
to be dissuaded. Despite his humiliation at the
of the Trust, his naivete continued to agents provocateurs.
He
make him
told the former
easy prey for
hands
OGPU
White General Denikin
in
November 1929: "Great movements are spreading across Russia. Never have so many people come from over there to see me and ask me to collaborate with their clandestine organizations." At Kutepov's request, his former chief of staff Steifon made at least two secret trips to Russia to meet the imaginary conspirators, and returned
full
of OGPU-
3
which he transmitted to Kutepov. Kutepov was a tragicomic figure. Though known
inspired optimism,
ers as "the iron general,"
he more closely
fits
to his admir-
the description once
applied to the last Tsarist commander-in-chief, General Kornilov: "a
with the heart of a lion and the brains of a sheep." The OGPU would have been well advised to allow him to remain in Paris, alternately deceiving and discrediting him to add to the demoralization of the White Russian diaspora. But neither the Cheka nor any of its successors has ever found it possible to take a sober and objective view
man
of the real strength of counterrevolutionary forces. In the Stalin era the
was wildly exaggerated. Even Kutepov was perceived as such a potential menace at the head of the ROVS that he had to be liquidated. Since, unlike Savinkov and significance of all forms of counterrevolution
Reilly,
he refused to be lured back to the Soviet Union, the
arranged to kidnap him instead. The decision to do so was
OGPU
made on
the
orders of Stalin himself. 4
The
OGPU
officer sent
from Moscow to organize Kutepov's
kidnap, Sergei Puzitsky, had taken part in both the Sindikat and Trust deceptions.
The kidnap took
morning of Sunday, January
place shortly before eleven o'clock on the 26, 1930, in the
in the seventh arrondissement.
The
middle of a Paris
who told him that two from the Soviet Union of the anti-Bolshevik under-
Kutepov's former chief of staff, General Steifon, representatives
street
trap seems to have been sprung by
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
152
ground
(in reality the
a leading
OGPU
OGPU
illegal,
resident in Paris, Nikolai
Kuzmin, and
Andrei Fikhner) needed to see him urgently
and were waiting in a taxi. The OGPU was also assisted by a Communist Paris policeman so that if any bystander saw Kutepov being bundled into a taxi (which one did), the kidnap would be mistaken for a police arrest (which
it
was).
Early in the afternoon of January 26 Steifon called at Kutepov's flat
and asked
to see the general.
failed to return
from a memorial
On
being told by his wife that he had
service, Steifon successfully dissuaded
her from calling the police for several hours by
first
possible explanations for the general's absence
and then suggesting
offering various
White Russian community. Meanwhile the car containing Kutepov was speeding with an escort toward the Channel coast. Eyewitnesses, later interviewed by the Surete, saw him being bundled on board a Soviet steamer. The kidnap, however, went wrong. The combination of the anesthetic used to overpower Kutepov and the general's weak heart proved fatal. He died from a heart attack a hundred miles from the Soviet port of Novorossilsk. The OGPU interrogation of Kutepov, designed to lay bare the remaining secrets of White inquiries within the
Guard
conspiracies against the Soviet regime, thus never took place. 5
Soon
after
emigre general
Kutepov's abduction, the
in Paris, Nikolai Skoblin,
division in the Civil
Nadezhda had been
War. 6 Skoblin's
Plevitskaya, popularly
in
touch with the
wife, the
known
OGPU
OGPU
for
recruited another
former commander of a White
homesick emigre singer
as the
some
"Kursk
nightingale,"
years. In the
mid- 1920s
she had sought permission to return to the Soviet Union. Dzerzhinsky
She was, he believed, potentially too valuable among the
refused.
emigres. In the weeks following the kidnap General Skoblin and Nadezhda Plevitskaya called almost daily on Kutepov's wife to offer sympathy and seek the latest news on the investigation into his disappearance. "Skoblin still
alive,"
and
his wife
always used to
Madame Kutepov
prise at their certainty, Plevitskaya told
confirmed
it."
and
me that my husband was "When I expressed sur-
me she had had a dream which
Plevitskaya's skill in dissembling,
ability to tug at
Russia,
tell
later recalled.
combined with her
emigre heart strings by her rendering of "Ah, Mother
You Are Covered Deep
ballads, gave both her
Russian communities
all
in Snow" and other sentimental songs and Skoblin the ability to penetrate White
over Europe. 7
For many years the
OGPU
and
its
successors indignantly dis-
"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)
153
claimed any part in Kutepov's kidnap. The truth was finally admitted almost casually in 1965 in a
KGB obituary notice on the kidnap orga-
nizer:
Commissar of
State Security Sergei Vasilyevich Puzitsky
took part in the Civil War, was an ardent Bolshevik-Leninist
and a pupil of F. E. Dzerzhinsky. Not only did he participate in the capture of the bandit Savinkov and in the destruction of
.
.
.
the "Trust," but he carried out a brilliant operation
in the arrest of
Kutepov and a number of White Guard
organizers and inspirers of foreign military intervention in the Civil War.
of the
S.
Kutepov's successor lovich Miller, his
V. Puzitsky was twice awarded the Order
Red Banner and at the
was no
round reddish
received Chekist decorations. 8
head of the ROVS, General Yevgeni Kar-
less naive.
Despite a beard and military mustache,
and cheerful expression gave him a
face, blue eyes,
genial rather than imposing appearance.
dent was to place most of the
One
ROVS funds in
of his
first
acts as presi-
the hands of a confidence
named Ivar Kreuger. By the time Kreuger blew his brains out March 1932, the funds had disappeared. The previous summer, even
trickster in
became known, Denikin had written "The ROVS has sunk into torpor. It no longer
before the Kreuger scandal
morosely to a friend: gives any sign of
The most
mess!"
Shatilov,
life
other than constant internal intrigues.
serious of these internal intrigues
who, without prompting by the
OGPU,
was
led
engaged
A
real
by General in a series
of plots to undermine Miller's authority and challenged two other
White generals to duels. Though both duels were called off, the French government threatened to withdraw his residence permit. In the end Shatilov was allowed to remain but only on condition he stayed strictly out of politics.
He
left
the
ROVS
Thanks
ROVS
influential
like
taxi driver.
to Miller's inept leadership
succeeded in destabilizing
assistance.
The OGPU, however,
OGPU
mole within the
In 1933 Miller put later,
— a number of other Tsarist —took up work as a
and
notables in reduced circumstances
him
in
itself
and Shatilov's
intrigues, the
without the need for
accelerated
ROVS
its
9
decline.
OGPU
The most
remained General Skoblin.
charge of "secret work in Finland."
A year
with the help of Finnish intelligence, Skoblin smuggled two
ROVS
agents across the Finnish-Soviet border. Both were quickly
intercepted by the
NKVD but produced pistols from their pockets and
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
154
made
a remarkable escape back to Finland.
The Finns
refused
all
further cooperation in frontier crossings, strongly hinting that they
possessed intelligence identifying Skoblin as an
him
indignantly defended
agent. Miller
as "a constant victim of intrigues
and vicious
and appointed Skoblin "head of foreign counterespion-
slanderers,"
age."
NKVD
10
In 1934 Miller's financial losses forced
headquarters to
named
less
expensive premises.
Sergei Tretyakov offered
modest
rate.
Unknown
him
to Miller,
him
to
move
the
ROVS
A Russian emigre businessman a ground-floor apartment at a
Tretyakov was an
NKVD
agent
code-named Ivanov. By the time Miller moved into the new ROVS headquarters, it had been fitted with an elaborate set of NKVD listening devices. For the next few years Tretyakov spent several hours a day in rooms immediately above the headquarters, transcribing conversations between Miller and his subordinates. His devotion to duty was commended in an exchange of NKVD telegrams late in 1934: Paris to Center:
We
consider
and devotion seriously
fell
taking
down
necessary to note Ivanov's conscientiousness
it
to his work. ill,
On
the night of
November 23 he
but in spite of his illness he spent
all
day
information, as you can see from the notes.
Center to Paris:
Give Ivanov a grant for medical treatment, in view of his conscientious and devoted work. Decide on the sum yourself, but
it
should not exceed one month's salary. 11
The secret history of the First Chief Directorate concludes that by 1933 Leon Trotsky had replaced Miller and the ROVS as its chief overseas 12
Throughout
and a half years of exile (in Turkey from summer of 1933, in France from the summer of 1933 to the summer of 1935, in Norway from the summer of 1935 until the end of 1936, in Mexico from January 1937 until his assassination in August 1940) Trotsky's entourage, like Miller's, was target.
his eleven
the beginning of 1929 to the
successfully penetrated
of the early
OGPU
by the
OGPU and NKVD. The most successful
penetration agents were the Sobolevicius brothers,
sons of a rich Jewish merchant in Lithuania, later better
known
as Jack
"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)
155
Soble and Dr. Richard Soblen. For three years from the spring of 1929
among
They had acand cover addresses used by Trotsky to correspond secretly with his supporters in the Soviet Union, and Trotsky entrusted much of the correspondence to them all of it beboth brothers were
Trotsky's closest confidants.
cess to the codes, secret inks,
—
trayed, along with Trotsky's Soviet supporters, to the
Sobolevicius brothers also spent
OGPU,
much
visiting Trotsky's supporters in
reemerged during the Second World States.
OGPU. The
time, again for the benefit of the
France and Germany. Both
War as Soviet
agents in the United
13
The only
difficult
moment
in the penetration
tourage during his Turkish exile occurred in the
OGPU
from one of
learned, probably
Trotsky had received a secret
visit
its
of Trotsky's en-
summer
of 1929.
The
penetration agents, that
from a sympathizer within
OGPU
The sympathizer was Yakov Blyumkin, who as a young LSR in Cheka in 1918 had helped assassinate Count Mirbach, the German
ranks.
the
ambassador,
in defiance of
Dzerzhinsky's orders.
been rehabilitated and had risen to become
He had
OGPU
subsequently
"illegal resident" in
Blyumkin agreed to transmit a message from Trotsky to Radek and, according to the KGB version of events, "discussed methods for setting up illegal contact with the Trotskyite underground in Moscow." Istanbul.
Trilisser did not order
Blyumkin's immediate
arrest. Instead,
probably in consultation with Yagoda, he ordered an attractive agent,
OGPU
Lisa Gorskaya, to "abandon bourgeois prejudices," seduce
Blyumkin, discover the
full
extent of his conspiracy with Trotsky, and
ensure that he returned to Moscow. At the Turkish end, the operation
was handled by the "legal"
OGPU resident, Nahum (Leonid) Aleksan-
drovich Eitingon (then using the alias Nahumov), later to achieve fame within the
KGB
14 as the organizer of Trotsky's assassination.
When
Blyumkin was arrested in Moscow a few weeks later in Gorskaya's company, he realized, too late, that she had been used as an agent provocateur. "Lisa," he said, "you have betrayed me!" Blyumkin became the first Bolshevik to be shot for sympathizing with the opposition. According to Orlov, "He went courageously to his execution, and when the fatal shot was about to be fired, he shouted: 'Long live Trotsky!' " Soon afterward Gorskaya married the OGPU resident in Berlin (and later in Washington), Vasili Mikhailovich Zarubin. 15
Trotsky's Russian supporters dwindled rapidly during his
Turkish
exile.
Convinced
that, as
Trotsky himself had said
in 1924,
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
156
"One cannot be
right against the Party,"
capitulated to the Stalinist
doubtless the
line.
One
16
most of the Left Opposition
report reaching Trotsky (and
OGPU as well) at the end of 1929 put the number of his
supporters in exile and in prison at no
wrote defiantly to a group of Soviet
more than a thousand. Trotsky
disciples:
"Let there remain in exile
not 350 people faithful to their banner, but only 35. Let there remain
even three
—the banner
Western Communist
OGPU
will
remain." Tourists and sympathizers in
parties traveling to the Soviet
Union continued,
between Trotsky and the declining band of Russian faithful. Letters, often from the gulag, written on rough sheets of wrapping paper, sometimes on cigamostly under
rette paper,
surveillance, to act as couriers
hidden or disguised
through to him
in
Turkey
in a variety of ingenious ways, trickled
for several years.
On
one occasion a match-
box arrived on his desk crammed with a complete political thesis penned in minuscule script. Then at the end of 1932, the trickle stopped. 17
Trotsky's Western supporters were never numerous and always
Though
divided.
Trotskyists have an incurable tendency to fragment
("Where there are two
Trotskyists, there are three tendencies"), their
fragmentation during the 1930s was cleverly accelerated and embittered by
ceeded
OGPU
agents provocateurs.
in playing off the
The
Sobolevicius brothers suc-
prominent Austrian Trotskyist Kurt Landau
against Trotsky himself with such success that
from the movement. Another
OGPU
Trotsky's confidence, Henri Lacroix, suddenly
moralizing claim in tion gets
March 1933
no support and
is
Landau was expelled
agent provocateur
the de-
that in Spain "the [Trotskyist] Opposi-
neither
known nor
understood, while the
support of the workers goes to the U.S.S.R. and to general,
who won
came out with
Communism
embodied in the Spanish Communist Party." 18 On any objective assessment, Stalin should have found the
in
evi-
him by the OGPU, of dwindling support and internal bickering within the penetrated Trotskyist movement deeply reassuring. But Stalin was incapable of objective assessment. Trotsky became an obsession that dominated many of his waking hours and interfered with sleep at night. Isaac Deutscher concludes: dence, regularly reported to
The
frenzy with which [Stalin] pursued the feud, making
the paramount preoccupation of international as well as of the Soviet
it
communism
Union and subordinating to it all and other interests, beggars
political, tactical, intellectual
"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)
description: there
is
in the
157
whole of history hardly another
immense resources of power and propaganda were employed against a single individual. 19
case in which such
Had
would be was obsessed was a
Stalin been pursuing the real Trotsky, his obsession
But the Trotsky with
inexplicable.
whom
Stalin
mythical figure constructed by Stalin's "sickly suspicious" imagination,
who
bore increasingly
As
little
resemblance to the Trotsky
whom
he had
menace of the mythical Trotsky loomed ever power and influence of the real Trotsky steadily declined. Trotsky could not even find a secure European headquarters from which to rally Communist opposition. He left Turkey in search of a new base in November 1932 but was compelled to return four weeks later, having failed to find any government willing to allow him more than a transit visa. He was eventually allowed to move to France in the summer of 1933 but was not permitted to live in Paris, was subjected to a series of restrictions and finally expelled in the summer of 1935. From France Trotsky moved to Norway, where his political activity was once again restricted, before he was expelled, this sent into exile.
the
larger in Stalin's mind, so the
time to Mexico, at the end of 1936. 20
The
chief organizer of the Trotskyite
movement
for
most of the
who left Turkey two years later after the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. It was Sedov who, until his death in 1938, organized publication of the Bulletin of the Opposition (Biulletin Op21 pozitsii) and maintained contact with Trotsky's scattered followers. Sedov's entourage, like his father's, was penetrated by the OGPU and the NKVD. From 1934 until his death his closest confidant and collaborator was an NKVD agent, the Russian-born anthropologist Mark Zborowski {alias Etienne), who helped him publish the Bulletin and try 1930s was not Trotsky himself but his son, Lev Sedov,
for Berlin in 1931
and moved
to Paris
what opposition remained in Russia. Sedov him the key to his letter collect his mail, and kept Trotsky's most confiden-
to keep in contact with
trusted Zborowski so completely that he gave
him to and archives
box, allowed tial files
in his house.
22
Under Menzhinsky and Yagoda, OGPU and NKVD foreign operations against Trotsky and his followers were limited to surveillance, penetration, and destabilization. Under Yezhov the NKVD embarked on a policy of liquidation of the Trotskyite leadership. In December 1936 Yezhov set up an Administration of Special Tasks under his own per-
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
158
sonal direction, with "mobile groups" to carry out assassinations
abroad ordered by
Stalin.
23
field
of action during the next two
was slow
to react to the outbreak of the
main
Its
years was Spain.
The
Soviet government
Spanish Civil
War
in July 1936,
wrongly believing that the Republican
government would quickly defeat the rebellion by the Nationalist forces of General Francisco Franco.
When
the experienced diplomat Marcel
Rosenberg eventually arrived as Soviet ambassador on August 27, however,
he was accompanied by a large retinue, including as head of a
Soviet military mission the former head of military intelligence, eral
Jan Berzin, a
tall,
gray-haired, taciturn
man,
ironically
Gen-
sometimes
mistaken for an Englishman. Other Soviet military advisers included Generals Goriev and Kulik and the future Marshals Malinovsky, fought in the Civil
War
under a variety of disguises: among them General Lazar Stern,
alias
Rokossovsky, and Konev. Red
Army
officers
General Emilio Kleber, provided by the port and a "legend" to match, iour of
Madrid"
at the
NKVD with a Canadian pass-
who won worldwide fame
end of 1936; General Mate Zalka,
a former Hungarian novelist
probably the most popular
as the "Sav-
alias
Lukacs,
who had joined the Red Army and become commander in the International Brigades;
General Janos Galicz, alias Gall, also of Hungarian origin and probably the least popular of the International Brigade
commanders; General
Dmitri Pavlov, alias Pablo, perhaps the ablest of the Republican tank
commanders; and General Karol Swierczewski,
Army
alias Walter, a
Red
officer of Polish origin, later vice-minister of defense in the
post-World
War
II
Polish
Communist government. 24
There was an equally powerful, though
far less visible,
NKVD
presence in Republican Spain, headed by the future defector Aleksandr Orlov,
who
arrived in September 1936 with the principal aim of secur-
ing the victory of Stalinism over the Marxist heresies that assailed
The ECCI informed
the Spanish
Communist Party
in
December:
Whatever happens, the final destruction of the Trotskyists must be achieved, exposing them to the masses as a fascist secret service carrying out provocations in the service of
Hitler
and General Franco, attempting
to split the
Popular
Front, conducting a slanderous campaign against the Soviet
Union, a secret service actively aiding fascism
in Spain.
26
25
it.
"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)
Such sectarian bigotry was
far
159
from the minds of most of the 35,000 them Communist, who set out for
foreign volunteers, a majority of
Spain to join the International Brigades in defense of the Republic. For
them
as for
most of the European
left,
who
mistakenly believed
Muswar was a crusade against international fascism for many, the poet, W. H. Auden, the greatest emotional experience of their
Franco's revolt to be a conspiracy orchestrated by Hitler and solini,
as for
—
the
lives:
What's your proposal? To build the just I
agree.
Or
Death? Very I
am
city? I will.
the suicide pact, the romantic
is it
well, I accept, for
your choice, your decision. Yes,
Stalin himself caught that
mood
in
an open
I
am
Spain.
letter to the
Spanish
Com-
munist leadership in October: "Liberation of Spain from the yoke of the Fascist reactionaries
the
common
is
cause of
Stalin's
not the private concern of Spaniards alone, but all
own main
progressive humanity."
27
concern, however, was Trotskyite infiltration
rather than the fascist menace.
At the main
recruiting center for the
International Brigades in Paris, non-Party volunteers were usually
questioned by
NKVD
officers,
who
concealed their
volunteers with passports were asked to surrender Spain; they were then forwarded to
The
NKVD
was
them on
Moscow Center by
later
used by
its illegals.
Most
arrival in
diplomatic bag.
particularly pleased with a haul of
United States passports
The
identities.
two thousand
28
International Brigades base in Albacete
was controlled by
a Comintern political directorate headed by the French representative
on the ECCI, Andre Marty, who for some years had been working for Soviet military intelligence, and who collaborated enthusiastically in the NKVD's war on Trotskyism. No non-Russian Communist was more obsessed than Marty with rooting out anti-Stalinist heresy. With Marty came a high-powered contingent of Comintern functionaries. Some, like his Italian deputies, Luigi Longo {alias Gallo) and Giuseppe de Vittorio
{alias Nicolette), loathed
Marty's sectarian fanaticism. Oth-
Marty mold, among them the German leader Walter Ulbricht, who ran an NKVD unit tracking down German, Austrian, and Swiss "Trotskyists" in the Inter-
ers
were doctrinaire
future East
national Brigades. 29
Stalinists in the
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
160
The support
for the Republicans
by the volunteers of the Inter-
national Brigades could not equal the aid to the Nationalists from Nazi
Germany and
Though
Fascist Italy.
well aware that Franco
was
at
heart a traditionalist rather than a fascist, Hitler looked on Spain as a suitable battleground later
War.
on which
Hitler's
tary rebellion victory.
to rehearse the techniques of Blitzkrieg
of the Second World prompt assistance in the summer of 1936 saved the milifrom early defeat and set Franco on the path to ultimate
used to devastating
effect in the early years
30
The Republicans
suffered
from one further serious disadvan-
While the Nationalists were united, they were divided. Though the Russians did not cause the divisions, they turned them into a civil war tage.
within the Civil War.
Trotskyism was
By
the spring of 1937 Stalin's struggle against
danger of overshadowing the war against Franco.
in
Obrero de Unification Marxista (POUM), which had Trotskyite sympathies though it was sharply criticized by Stalin feared that the Partido
Trotsky himself, might give the great heretic a Spanish base. founder in 1935, Andreu Nin,
who had once been
Its co-
Trotsky's private
Moscow, was minister of justice in the Catalan government by the Communists in December 1936. In May 1937 the Spanish Communists, assisted by the NKVD, embarked on POUM's destruction. Slutsky, the head of INO, informed NKVD residents: "Our whole attention is focused on Catalonia and on our merciless fight against the Trotskyite bandits, the Fascists and the POUM." 31 In June Nin was arrested, brutally tortured, then flayed alive when he refused to confess to imaginary crimes. The Communists tried unsuccessfully to conceal his death by pretending that Nin had been seized by a Nazi snatch squad. 22 Soon afterward, another of Trotsky's former secretaries, Irwin Wolf, who had worked for him during his Norwegian exile, was kidnapped in Barcelona and liquidated by the secretary in
until ousted
NKVD. Among 33
others of
POUM's
international sympathizers
who
died in suspicious circumstances were Trotsky's former supporter Kurt
Landau; Marc Rhein, son of the old Menshevik leader Rafael Abramovich; Jose Robles, a former lecturer at Johns Hopkins University in the
United
States;
English miners' leader. shot after
and the journalist Bob
Many
of the
summary Communist terrified
file
were
illegally
The remnants of the Their lawyer Benito Pabon
court-martials.
leadership were arrested in June 1937.
became so
Smilie, son of the
POUM rank and
of assassination that he fled to the Philippines. 34
Dr. Juan Negrin,
who became Republican prime
minister in
"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)
May
161
was aware of some of the horrors perpetrated by the But he was also astoundingly naive. At the end of the war,
1937,
NKVD.
35
when the Nationalists displayed the private prisons built by the NKVD-dominated Servicio de Investigation Militar (SIM), Negrin dismissed them as bogus fascist propaganda. Ten years later he admitted he
had been deceived. 36 While the
POUM
NKVD
and
their
SIM
collaborators disposed of
supporters as discreetly as possible, Stalin's favorite French-
man, Andre Marty, orchestrated a public witch hunt against Trotskyite treachery. "To Marty," wrote one of the French Communists who worked for him, "the enemy was more inside the International Brigades and Loyalist
territory than
on the other
side of the lines." All breaches
of military discipline were, in his view, part of a vast Trotskyite plot to "split
and demoralize the International Brigades." His reputation as
summoned back to Paris to Communist leadership. Marty freely execution of five hundred members of the Inter-
"the butcher of Albacete" led to his being explain himself to the French
admitted ordering the
national Brigades. All, he declared, had committed "all sorts of crime"
and "undertaken espionage in favor of Franco." Ernest Hemingway, for all his sympathy for the International Brigades, found Marty "crazy as a bedbug. He has a mania for shooting people. ... He purifies more than Salvarsan." 37
Though
the
NKVD
"mobile groups" were most active in Spain, their
operations also extended to leading Trotskyists and traitors as far afield as
North America.
On
June
agent Juliette Stuart Poyntz
5,
1937, the disaffected
left
her
room
at the
American
Women's
NKVD
Association
clubhouse in Manhattan. She was never seen again. Evidence later
emerged that she had been lured to her death by a former Russian lover in the NKVD, Schachno Epstein, and her body buried behind a brick wall in a Greenwich Village house. 38 Most "wet affairs," however, were conducted on the other side of the Atlantic. In the
summer
of 1937, the
NKVD discovered, proba-
from Mark Zborowski {alias Etienne), that one of its officers in Western Europe had made secret contact with the leading Dutch
bly
Henryk
A
commanded by
the
deputy head of INO, Mikhail Shpigelglas, a short, stout figure with
fair
Trotskyist,
hair
and protruding
liquidate the culprit. in the
Sneevliet.
eyes,
was dispatched
On July
Netherlands, was
"mobile group"
to Paris to track
17 Walter Krivitsky, the
summoned
to
down and
NKVD resident
meet Shpigelglas
in the Paris
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
162
Exposition grounds at Vincennes. Shpigelglas revealed that the traitor
was a Soviet
Ludwig,
{alias
to
illegal
NKVD
an
of Polish origin in Paris
alias Reiss). Poretsky
had
officer in the Soviet trade
Russia, not expecting Shpigelglas opened
it
it
to be
opened
until
named Ignace Poretsky
just given a sealed dispatch
mission for transmission to it
arrived at
Moscow
ideally calculated to reinforce the paranoid fears of Stalin
patch contained a retsky's defection,
Stalin's crimes,
without mercy against Stalinism."
I
intend to devote
want
my
It
and
calling for "a fight
concluded:
feeble forces to the cause of Lenin. I
to continue the fight, for only our victory
proletarian revolution
—
will free
the U.S.S.R. of Stalinism. [Trotskyist]
Six weeks later,
dis-
Central Committee announcing Po-
letter to the
denouncing
and Yezhov
NKVD. The
underground had penetrated the
that a Trotskyist
Center.
and showed Krivitsky the contents. They were
—that of the
humanity of capitalism and
Forward
to
new
struggles!
For the
Fourth International!
on September
4,
Poretsky's bullet-ridden body was
found on a Swiss road near Lausanne. To lure him to his destruction, Shpigelglas used a friend of the Poretsky family
Schildbach, a
German Jewish Communist
refugee
named Gertrude who wrote to Po-
retsky to say that she urgently needed his advice. Schildbach
not bring herself to follow
met
moment
she could
NKVD instructions to hand Mrs.
Poretsky
Poretsky and his wife at a Lausanne cafe. At the
last
a box of chocolates laced with strychnine (later recovered by the Swiss police).
But Schildbach successfully lured Poretsky into a side road,
where he was shot with a submachine gun
NKVD
assassin of
Monegasque
origin,
at point-blank
range by an
Roland Francois Rossi
(alias
At the last moment Poretsky realized that he was being led into a trap. When his body was found, he was clutching in his hand a clump of Schildbach's graying hair. The NKVD attempted to lay a false trail by sending an anonymous letter to the Swiss police identifying the body Abiate).
as that of an international
arms smuggler. The plan
failed.
Though
Rossi and Schildbach escaped, their part in the assassination was revealed to the Swiss police by Rossi's mistress. In Rossi's abandoned suitcase the police found a detailed plan of Trotsky's
Mexico. 39
home
in exile in
"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)
163
The next victim of the NKVD mobile groups was the head of the White Guard ROVS in Paris, General Miller. In December 1936 Slutsky, the head of INO, arrived in Paris to begin organizing Miller's kidnap. He sent a request to Krivitsky, the resident in the Netherlands, asking him to recommend two agents capable of impersonating German officers. It was only after Miller's kidnap eight months later that Krivitsky real40 ized the purpose of the request. On September 22, 1937, like Kutepov seven years earlier, Miller disappeared in broad daylight on a Paris street.
Unlike Kutepov, however, he
Kusonsky,
general, General
to be
left
opened
if
a note with his secretary-
he failed to return. The note
revealed that Miller had an appointment with General Skoblin at 12:30 p.m.,
and that they were due to meet two Germans: one the military
attache from a neighboring country, the other from the Paris embassy. Skoblin's cover as an
NKVD
agent was blown. Late on the
evening after the kidnap General Kedrov, vice-president of the
and General Kusonsky sent
for Skoblin at
ROVS
ROVS,
headquarters and
asked him where Miller had gone. Unaware of Miller's note, Skoblin replied that he
had not seen him
note, Skoblin continued to
Kusonsky
insisted that Skoblin
Skoblin pushed past them, ran caped. His pursuers were case.
From the
By
all
day.
When
confronted with the
deny that he had seen Miller. Kedrov and
accompany them
down
to the police station.
several flights of stairs,
hampered by burned-out
lights
and
on the
es-
stair-
the time they reached the street, Skoblin had disappeared.
Paris he escaped to Spain,
NKVD.
where he was probably liquidated by
His wife Nadezhda Plevitskaya was brought to
December, found
twenty years' hard labor. She died
The prosecution
in prison in
trial in
and sentenced September 1940. 41
guilty of assisting in the kidnap,
at Plevitskaya's trial claimed,
on the
to
basis of
had been taken to a Soviet embassy body placed in a large trunk, which was taken
a Surete investigation, that Miller building, killed,
and
his
by Ford truck to be loaded onto a Russian freighter waiting at dockside
Le Havre. Several witnesses saw the trunk being loaded on board. was still alive inside the trunk, heavily drugged. Unlike Kutepov seven years earlier, he survived the voyage to Russia. Once in Moscow, he was brutally interrogated, given a secret trial and shot. Even Miller's interrogation and liquidation, however, failed to persuade the Center that the White Guards no longer posed any credi-
in
Miller, however,
ble threat.
When
Sergei Tretyakov's transcriptions of discussions at the
ROVS headquarters after Miller's abduction failed to reveal major new anti-Soviet plots, the Center concluded that Tretyakov
(code-named
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
164
Ivanov) must have joined the plotters. dency:
"We
believe that Ivanov
conversations
is
It
telegraphed to the Paris
42 sending us pure inventions." In
is
Center that was deceiving
resi-
deceiving us, and instead of real reality,
it
was the
with further imaginary conspiracies.
itself
had a devastating effect on the ROVS. Kusovsky was wrongly accused by some White Guards of having taken Miller's kidnap
part in the plot.
under
its
new
The
ROVS moved its headquarters to Brussels,
head, General Arkhangelsky,
it
where,
proved even more mori-
bund than under Miller. 43 Belgium was also the site of the next NKVD assassination. At the beginning of 1938, after a long manhunt, the OGPU defector Georgi Agabekov, who had fled to the West nine years 44 earlier, was murdered by a mobile group. A manhunt also began for two more recent defectors: the NKVD Dutch resident Krivitsky and the great virtuoso of the Comintern front organizations, Willi Miinzenberg, both of whom had refused orders to return to Moscow to certain liquidation in 1937. In July 1938 the manhunt was extended to cover the
NKVD
resident in Republican Spain, Aleksandr Orlov,
refused a recall by
The
who
also
Center. 45
NKVD abroad, how-
chief "enemies of the people" hunted by the
ever, gets:
Moscow
were the leading Trotskyists. The
NKVD
had three main
tar-
Trotsky's son and principal organizer, Lev Sedov; the secretary-
designate of the Trotskyite Fourth International, which was to be
founded formally
in
September 1938, Rudolf Klement; and
Leon Trotsky,
great heretic himself,
of Trotskyite infiltration of the
finally the
Mexico. Stalin's fears
in exile in
NKVD were kept alive by the defection
of Poretsky's friend Krivitsky in October 1937.
The following month,
Krivitsky obtained an introduction to Sedov in Paris through the lawyer of Poretsky's widow:
When I saw
Sedov
I
told
him frankly
that
join the Trotskyists, but rather for advice
He
received
me
cordially,
daily. I learned to
personality in his
and
admire
own
right.
I
saw him
did not
come
to
thereafter almost
son of Leon Trotsky as a
shall never forget the disinter-
and comfort he gave me agents were after me. He was
ested help Stalin
I
this
I
and comradeship.
in those still
days when the
very young but was
exceptionally gifted
—charming, well-informed,
the treason trials in
Moscow
efficient.
In
was said that he received vast sums of money from Hitler and the Mikado. I found him it
"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40) living the life of a revolutionist, toiling all
day
165
in the cause
46 of the opposition, in actual need of better food and clothing.
was unaware that Sedov's closest collaborator, was an NKVD agent. Stalin cannot
Krivitsky, however,
Mark Zborowski have
(alias Etienne),
failed to see the
most
sinister significance in the
"almost daily"
meetings between Sedov and Krivitsky, dutifully reported by Etienne to
Moscow
in
the decision to proceed with Sedov's liquidation.
Center. Those meetings must surely have played
some
part
Trotsky was a demanding father with the unhappy knack of robbing
his children of their self-esteem.
all
vitsky's admiration for his son's dedication
and
He
did not share Kri-
efficiency.
While Sedov
struggled in poverty and ill-health to publish the Biulletin and remain in
touch with the feuding, disintegrating Trotskyite movement, his
isfied
with the
way
the question of
its
am utterly dissat-
4
Mexico
in
January 1938: T
the Biulletin
is
conducted, and
father wrote angrily from
transfer to
New
I
must pose anew
York."
Trying desperately to meet Trotsky's unreasonable demands,
Sedov repeatedly postponed an operation for appendicitis, despite
re-
was clear that he could delay no longer. Etienne helped to convince him that, to avoid NKVD surveillance, he must have the operation not at a French current
illness.
After a severe attack on February
1938,
8,
it
hospital but at a small private clinic run by Russian emigres, which,
though Sedov did not suspect agents.
No
it,
was probably penetrated by
NKVD
sooner had Etienne ordered the ambulance than, as he later
admitted, he alerted the
NKVD.
Sedov was operated on the same evening. Over the next few days he seemed to make a normal recovery. For alleged security reasons, Etienne refused to reveal the address of the clinic (which he
instantly given to the
had
NKVD) to French Trotskyites. Sedov was visited
only by his wife, Jeanne, and Etienne.
On February
1
3
he had a sudden,
mysterious relapse and was found wandering, shouting deliriously,
through the
clinic corridors.
The surgeon was
so perplexed by Sedov's
condition that he asked his wife whether he might have attempted to take his
own
life.
poisoned by the
Jeanne burst into tears and said he must have been
NKVD.
Sedov's condition deteriorated rapidly despite repeated blood transfusions; he died in great pain thirty-two.
A
on February 16
at the age of only
routine inquest attributed his death to postoperational
complications, heart failure, and low powers of resistance. But there
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
166
were serious discrepancies
in the evidence.
Though
there
is,
unsurpris-
no proof of NKVD involvement, the probability is that the NKVD was responsible. 47 The NKVD already had a sophisticated medical section, the Kamera (Chamber), probably established by Yagoda, who had trained as a pharmacist, which experimented in the
ingly,
48 use of drugs and poisons. There can be no doubt that Sedov, like his
was targeted by an NKVD mobile group, and once the NKVD him to a clinic which it had probably already penetrated, it is scarcely likely that it made no attempt to end his life. father,
lured
Sedov's death gave the ist
NKVD the leading place in the Trotsky-
organization. Etienne took over responsibility for publishing the
Biulletin, kept in
touch with refugees from Stalinist Russia
who
tried
to contact Trotsky, and became the main link with his European followers.
He
successfully embroiled Trotsky with Sneevliet, further embit-
tered relations between Trotsky
and Jeanne, and unobtrusively
him how
Trotsky's confidence that he asked
assisted
was so certain of
the feuds between the Trotskyite sects. Etienne
to respond to suspicions
by Sneevliet and others that he was working for the
NKVD.
Trotsky
advised him to challenge his accusers to substantiate their charges before an
independent commission.
Trotsky's
own
confidence in
Etienne was unaffected.
The NKVD's next major Rudolf Klement, who was
in
Trotskyist target was the
German
charge of organization for the founding
conference of Trotsky's Fourth International, due to be held later in the
On
Klement vanished mysteriously from his Paris home. About a fortnight later Trotsky received a letter ostensibly written by Klement and posted in New York, denouncing him for allying with year.
Hitler
July 13
and other imaginary crimes. Copies of the
number of Trotsky's French no doubt
correctly, as either
by Klement with an
NKVD
letter also
reached a
supporters. Trotsky dismissed the letter,
an
NKVD forgery or a document written
revolver held to his head.
The NKVD's
was probably for Klement simply to disappear after his fictitious denunciation. Soon after the letter's arrival, however, a headless corpse was found washed ashore on the banks of the Seine. Two French intention
Trotskyists were able to recognize
it
as the
body of Klement by
identify-
ing distinctive scars on the hands. 49
The Fourth ence" opened
at the
International
home
was
stillborn. Its
founding "confer-
near Paris of the French Trotskyist, Alfred
Rosmer, on September 3, 1938, attended by only twenty-one delegates, claiming to represent mostly minuscule Trotskyist groups in eleven
"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)
The "Russian
countries.
now
section,"
167
whose authentic members had by
probably been entirely exterminated, was represented by the
NKVD
agent Etienne. Also on the fringes of the conference was
Ramon Mercader
{alias
Jacques Mornard, alias Frank Jacson), lover
of the American Trotskyist interpreter Sylvia AgelofF, and later to 50 achieve fame as the assassin of Trotsky.
Trotsky's biographer, Isaac Deutscher, fairly concludes that
was "little more than a fiction," with almost negligible influence beyond the dwindling, faction-ridden ranks of Trotsky's supporters. Trotsky himself had become hopelessly out of touch in his Mexican exile. While recognizing "the disproportion between our strength today and our tasks tomorrow," he forecast confidently that "in the course of the coming ten years the program of the Fourth International will gain the adherence of millions, and these revolutionary millions will be able to storm heaven and earth." 51 Perhaps the only statesman who took Trotsky's prophecies seriously was Stalin himself. Messages from the NKVD to its residencies abroad and from the Comintern to its member parties constantly complained of the lack of energy with which Trotskyism was being rooted out. One angry telegram to Stockholm and Oslo that stuck in Gordievsky's memory was typical of many in the files. "The campaign against Trotskyist the newly founded International
terrorist bandits,"
intolerable
it
declared, "is being pursued in your countries with
passivity."
52
In Stalin's conspiratorial mental universe,
Trotsky remained an even more dangerous opponent than Adolf Hitler.
With
Hitler Stalin foresaw, perhaps as early as the mid- 1930s, the
possibility of
an accommodation. With Trotsky
it
was a struggle
to the
death.
After the
last great
prewar show
Union began
trial in
March 1938
the Great Terror
wind down. In July Lavrenti Beria, head was made Yezhov's first deputy. By the time Yezhov was dismissed from the NKVD on December 8, effective power had already passed to Beria. Throughout the Great Terror, Stalin had avoided public responsibility. Yezhov's dismissal enabled Stalin to make him the scapegoat for such excesses of the Yezhovin the Soviet
of the Transcaucasian
to
NKVD,
shchina as could be publicly admitted. 53 His successor, Beria, struck Stalin's daughter, Svetlana, as
risy."
the
54
He was
NKVD
to
"a magnificent modern specimen of the
embodiment of oriental perfidy, flattery and hypocman of awesome personal depravity, who used procure, in many cases to snatch from the Moscow
artful courtier, the
also a
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
168
streets,
an endless supply of
women
—frequently
schoolgirls
—to be
raped and sexually abused. Husbands or parents who complained were 55 likely to end in the gulag. Under Beria, the Great Terror gave way to more selective terror. The manhunt for Trotsky, however, continued unabated. The real Trotsky in Mexico continued to bear little resemblance to the
who haunted
mythical Trotsky
Day
1940, twenty thousand
Stalin's diseased imagination.
On May
Mexican Communists marched through
Mexico City with banners demanding, "Out with Trotsky!" 56 Even by the calculations of Trotsky's entourage, Mexico contained no more than thirty active Trotskyists, spite their feuds,
Trotsky's
home
The
in
however,
split into several all
feuding factions. 57 De-
took turns standing guard around
Coyoacan.
KGB remembers the assassination of Trotsky as one of its
most important "special operations." The
Memory Room,
First
Chief Directorate
constructed in 1979, contains a portrait and eulogy of
the organizer of the assassination,
Nahum
(Leonid) Aleksandrovich
whose involvement in "wet affairs" went back to the liquidaBlyumkin in 1929. Eitingon was one of the few Jews in the NKVD to survive the purges. 58 He was remembered by one of his officers as a heavily built man with a bald head, narrow forehead, and Eitingon,
tion of
small, drilling eyes. 59 alias
He
took part in the Spanish Civil
War under
the
General Kotov, advising the International Brigades on partisan
warfare behind the Nationalist lover of the Barcelona
recruited both her
of Trotsky
As
and her son
—as NKVD
lines.
While
in
Spain he became the
Communist Caridad Mercader agents.
Ramon Mercader
del Rio,
and
—the future assassin
60
the plan of Trotsky's villa discovered by the Swiss police in
murder of Poretsky in 1937 showed, Trotsky surveillance from the moment he arrived in The future defector Vladimir Petrov was able in 1948 to read
Rossi's suitcase after the
was under Mexico. 61
one of the
close
files,
NKVD
four or five inches thick, dealing with Trotsky's assassi-
nation. It included
numerous photographs taken
inside the villa,
show-
ing the guards, the fences, Trotsky with his wife, Trotsky having tea
with friends, Trotsky's dog, and a variety of other subjects. Trotsky's
entourage in Mexico was probably penetrated, in varying degrees and at various times,
by several
the others' identity. file,
The
NKVD agents,
first,
each doubtless unaware of
according to Petrov's recollection of the
was a woman secretary recruited during Trotsky's Norwegian
"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)
exile."
was
The most
Ramon
influential
169
mole within Trotsky's entourage, however,
Mercader.
Mercader had been well
trained. Despite
months of
intensive
questioning after his arrest, he revealed nothing about either his real identity (which
was discovered only
in
1953) or his
work
for the
NKVD. He was highly intelligent, fluent in several languages, a trained and possessed of remarkable self-control. Sylvia Ageloff admitted that she never doubted his love for her until after Trotsky's assassination. Prolonged psychological testing showed that Mercader had an unusually rapid reaction time, an almost photographic memory, the ability to find his way in the dark, the capacity to learn quickly and remember complex instructions. He was able to take a Mauser rifle apart in the dark and reassemble it in three and athlete, a skilled dissembler
three-quarter minutes. 63
Mercader joined his Trotskyist mistress, Sylvia Ageloff, in New York in September 1939, traveling on a doctored Canadian passport obtained from a volunteer in the International Brigades, in the name of Frank Jacson (evidently an eccentric NKVD spelling of "Jackson"). In New York he made contact with the NKVD resident, Gaik Ovakimyan, through whom most instructions from Moscow Center on prepa64 rations for the assassination were forwarded. Following NKVD instructions, Mercader moved to Mexico City in October, allegedly to work for an import-export agency. There he renewed contact with his mother and her lover, Nahum Eitingon. In January 1940, at Mercader's persuasion, Sylvia Ageloff followed him to Mexico City. As Eitingon had no doubt calculated, Ageloff made contact with her guru, Leon Trotsky, and spent two months doing secretarial work for him. Mercader drove her to Trotsky's villa and returned to collect her after each visit. While Ageloff was in Mexico, Mercader made no attempt to enter the villa compound but gradually became a well-known figure to the guards and won the confidence of Trotsky's French disciples Alfred and Marguerite Rosmer. Shortly after Ageloff's return to New York in March 1940, the Rosmers allowed Mercader into the villa compound for the first time. 65
At
this stage,
Mercader's role was
The
still
that of penetration agent
had been turned into a fortress defended by iron bars, electrified wires, an automatic alarm system, machine guns, a permanent ten-man police guard, and unofficial Trotskyist sentries. Mercader's main task was to provide the intelligence on the villa's defenses, inhabitants, and guards necessary to planning an armed atrather than assassin.
villa
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
170
tack.
and
The
attack itself was led by the celebrated
painter,
David
Mexican Communist
Alfaro Siqueiros, a veteran of the International
Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Just before four o'clock
on the morning of
May
over twenty men, dressed in police and army uniforms,
23 a group of
commanded by
Siqueiros, surprised and overpowered the guard, and raked the villa bedrooms with machine-gun fire. Trotsky and his wife survived by
throwing themselves beneath the bed. The police
later
counted seventy-
bedroom wall. Siqueiros later claimed, improbably, that the object of the raid had been not to kill Trotsky but to stage a dramatic protest against his presence in Mexico. Released on bail, he escaped from Mexico with the help of the Chilean Communist poet
three bullet holes in the
Pablo Neruda. Five days after the raid Mercader met Trotsky for the
Amiable as
him how villa,
ever,
to fly
it.
first
time.
he gave Trotsky's grandson a toy glider and showed
Over the next three months he paid ten
visits to
the
never overstaying his welcome, sometimes bringing small presents
with him, and meeting Trotsky himself on only two or three occasions.
He made perhaps two trips to see Ovakimyan in New York to complete preparations for the assassination. On August 20 Mercader arrived at had written on which Trotsky agreed to give his comments. He also brought with him a dagger sewn into the lining of his raincoat, a revolver in one pocket and an ice pick in another. The murder weapon was to be the ice pick. The revolver was taken as a precaution, in case he had difficulty making his escape. The purpose of the dagger remains unclear; perhaps Mercader concealed it in his raincoat in case the other weapons were discovered. The NKVD had used similar methods before. In the winter of 1938-39 an NKVD officer named Bokov had been summoned by Beria and asked if he was strong enough to kill a man with a single blow. "Yes, Comrade Commissar," replied Bokov. Beria explained that the NKVD had discovered that a Soviet ambassador in the Middle East was planning to defect. Bokov was sent with an assistant to ensure that the ambassador was "rendered harmless." On their arrival he was given a short iron bar by the NKVD resident, concealed it in his clothing, then went with his assistant and the resident to pay a courtesy call on the ambassador. Bokov maneuvered himself behind the ambassador, and killed him with a single blow to the skull. He and his assistant wrapped the body in a carpet to conceal the bloodstains, bundled it into a car, then drove out of the city and buried it. The ambassador's wife the villa with an article he
"Enemies of the People" Abroad (1929-40)
171
was told that her husband had been urgently recalled to Moscow and had made arrangements for her and the children to follow him by train. They were, almost certainly, stopped en route and transferred to a labor
camp
for
"enemies of the people." 66
blow to the back of body was discovered. As Trotsky sat in his study, studying the article at his desk, Mercader took the ice pick from his pocket, closed his eyes, and brought it down with all the force he could muster on Trotsky's skull. But Trotsky did not
Mercader too expected
the head, and
make
to kill with a single
his escape before the
die instantly. Instead he let out "a terrible, piercing cry" ("I shall hear that cry," said Mercader, "all assassin's hand,
him.
He
my
and grasped the
life"),
turned, sank his teeth into the
ice pick before his strength
ebbed from
died in a hospital the next day, August 21, 1940.
The
KGB
file
recounts the assassination in minute detail.
records, Petrov later recalled, that the fatal
It
blow was struck with the
broad, not the pointed, end of the ice pick. 67 Mercader was sentenced to
twenty years
in jail.
His mother and Eitingon escaped to the Soviet
Union by prearranged
routes. In
Moscow Senora Mercader was
re-
ceived by Beria, presented to Stalin in the Kremlin, and decorated with the Order of Lenin. Within a few years she told the Spanish
Communist Party
was consumed by guilt. She Comintern head-
representative at
quarters:
They
[the
NKVD]
no longer have any use
for me. ...
Caridad Mercader
is
worst of assassins
.
am
I
known abroad. And it is dangerous to use me. But they know that I am no longer the woman I used to be.
also .
.
.
not simply Caridad Mercader, but the .
.
Not only did
I
travel
throughout
Europe tracking down Chekists who have abandoned Paradise, so as to assassinate them pitilessly. I have done even more! ... I made and I did this for them an assassin of my son, of Ramon, of this son whom I saw one day come out of Trotsky's house bound and bleeding and unable to come to me, and I had to flee in one direction and Leonid [Eitin-
—
—
gon] in another. 68
Ramon Mercader kept the Stalinist faith throughout his years in prison. History, he claimed,
would
see
him
as a soldier in the world revolution
who had done the working class an immense service by ridding it of a leader who set out to betray it. He enjoyed singing the revolutionary
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
172
song "The Young Guard," stressing the cause!"
Had Mercader been
last line:
"We work for a great
willing to reveal his true identity or his
KGB connection, he could have won parole. He refused and served the full
twenty-year term. In 1960 Mercader was freed from jail,
ico for Cuba,
and traveled
applied to join the Soviet
down. 69 Outside the Stalin era,
via Czechoslovakia to Russia.
Communist
KGB,
Party, his application
left
Mex-
When
he
was turned
Trotsky's assassin had become, in the post-
an embarrassing reminder of a paranoid
past.
6 Sigint,
Agent Penetration,
and the Magnificent Five from Cambridge (1930-39)
Of
Memory non-KGB officer.
the score of portraits of Soviet intelligence heroes in the
Room
of the First Chief Directorate, only one
is
of a
The exception is General Yan Karlovich Berzin, commander of a Cheka detachment in the Civil War but best known as the head of Soviet military intelligence (then the Fourth Department of the General
GRU,
Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie) from 1924 to 1935. Berzin was born in Latvia in 1890 and joined the revolutionary underground while still in his teens, spending several years in jail and hard labor in Siberia. In 1919 he served in the short-lived Latvian Soviet government. During his early years in military intelligence his closest collaborators, many of whom came from similar backgrounds, were known as the "Latvian fraction," just as Dzerzhinsky's chief lieutenants were known for a time as the "Polish fraction." In 1935 Berzin was sent on a Red Army mission to the Far East. He was recalled in August 1936 to become head of the Soviet military mission to the Spanish Republican government. A year later he was ordered back to Russia at the height of the Great Terror and liquidated. Berzin owes his place in the KGB hall of fame to his part in the expansion of foreign intelligence collection by both sigint and agent penetration. At the beginning of the 1930s he took part in setting up Staff, later
the l
2
173
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
174
a combined
OGPU/Fourth Department unit within the OGPU
Special
Department (Spets-Otdel), to handle both civilian and military
sigint,
headed by Gleb Boky of the OGPU with Colonel P. Kharkevich of the Fourth Department as his deputy. The unit was the most secret in
OGPU.
Lubyanka but
in the
building of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs on
Kuz-
netsky Bridge. According to Evdokia Kartseva (later Petrova),
who
the
Until 1935
it
was housed not
in the
joined the unit in 1933, the personnel were under strict orders not to reveal unit,
its
address even to their parents. 3 Like most young
Kartseva lived in fear of
women
Boky walked with
head.
its
in the
a stoop and
had the curious habit of wearing a raincoat all year round. Kartseva shuddered at his "cold, piercing blue eyes which gave people the feeling that he hated the sight of them."
Though
in his fifties,
Boky
prided
still
himself on his sexual athleticism and arranged regular group-sex week-
ends in his dacha.
When Evdokia
Kartseva asked a male colleague
about Boky's orgies, he replied: "If you so
about this to anyone, he will make playing with
dacha.
On
"plainest tion."
fire."
the night
and
Kartseva lived shift,
when
she
life
much
as
open your mouth
unbearable for you.
You
in fear of being invited to felt
are
Boky's
most vulnerable, she wore her
dullest clothes for fear of attracting his
unwelcome
atten-
4
Despite the personal depravity of
OGPU/Fourth Department
unit
its
chief,
was the world's
sourced sigint agency. In particular,
it
the combined
largest
received far
and
more
best-re-
assistance
from espionage than any similar agency in the West. Most humint agencies acquired cipher materials from time to time, but during the 1930s only the OGPU and the Fourth Department, following a lead set by the Okhrana before the Revolution, made their acquisition a major
combined sigint unit, the foreign had the greatest influence on Soviet policy were JapaWorking in the Japanese subsection of the unit, Evdokia Petrova
priority. In the early years of the
intercepts that nese.
discovered that Japanese cipher materials "were being secured through agents." 5 Those agents included, at various times in the 1930s, officials in the
Japanese embassies in Berlin and Prague. 6 Berzin's second major claim to fame within both the
the
GRU
is
KGB and
his part in adapting the techniques of agent penetration
developed by the
OGPU
in the
1920s (principally for use against the
White Guard emigration) to infiltrate foreign government bureaucracies and intelligence services during the 1930s. According to the classified history
of
INO
prepared to commemorate
its
sixtieth anniversary
Sigint,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
in 1980, that strategy
175
evolved in discussions between Berzin, Artuzov,
INO, and Pyatnitsky, the head of the Comintern's OMS. Berzin took the lead. At the beginning of the 1930s, INO's chief targets for penetration remained the White Guards, soon followed by the Trotskyists. Berzin was more interested in using agent penetration as a means of foreign intelligence collection. His lead, however, was swiftly followed by the OGPU and NKVD. The lines between Fourth Department and OGPU/NKVD responsibilities were frequently blurred during the 1930s. Fourth Department agents commonly collected political as well as military intelligence. The OGPU/ NKVD less commonly collected military as well as political intellithe head of It
seems
7
likely that
8
gence. Both increasingly took over
OMS
intelligence networks.
was Richard Sorge. a Hero of the approved hagiographies
Berzin's most successful penetration agent
In 1964, twenty years after his death, Sorge was Soviet Union, honored by a series of officially
and
—most unusually
stamps.
When
for a foreign agent
Hede Massing,
"romantic, idealistic scholar" slightly slanted
as "startlingly good-looking," a
who exuded charm: "His
and heavy-browed, had
no reason at all." 9 Richard Sorge was born
German oil
special issue of postage
Sorge joined the Fourth Department in 1929, he struck
the Comintern agent,
for
—a
made
driller,
in the
[the] quality
Caucasus
cold blue eyes,
of looking amused
in 1895, the
son of a
whom he later described as "unmistakably national-
and imperialist," and a Russian mother. He went to school in Berlin, was wounded fighting in the First World War, became disillusioned by the "meaninglessness" of the devastation that it caused, and joined the revolutionary wing of the labor movement. The Bolshevik Revolution persuaded him "not only to support the movement theoretically and ideologically but to become an actual part of it." After the war Sorge gained a Ph.D. in political science from Hamburg University and worked as a Communist militant. Late in 1924 he moved to Moscow, beginning work for OMS early in 1925 and acquiring Soviet citizenship. From 1927 to 1929 OMS sent him on a series of intelligence missions in Germany and, he later claimed, to England and Scandinavia. In November 1929 he was personally recruited by General Berzin to the Fourth Department, though he also remained in touch with Pyatnitsky and OMS-. ist
His
first
assignment was to run an espionage network in Shang-
hai under cover as a journalist
who
later
German journalist. There he became
his
recruited a Japanese
most important agent, Hotsumi Ozaki,
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
176
a
young Marxist
from a wealthy family having excellent con-
idealist
nections with the Japanese government. In January 1933 Sorge re-
turned to
Moscow and was
congratulated personally by Berzin on his
achievements in Shanghai. His next, and by far his most important, assignment was Tokyo.
En
route he spent several months in Germany,
strengthening his cover as a journalist and establishing himself as a convivial
member of the Nazi
farewell dinner in Berlin.
10
Party. Dr. Goebbels himself attended his
On
Tokyo
his arrival in
boasted after his arrest eight years
The fact in
that
I
German embassy
trust
by people there was the
foundation of my organization in Japan the fact that
made
use of
I infiltrated it
for
my
September 1933
later:
successfully approached the
Japan and won absolute
in
German embassy. He
Sorge rapidly ingratiated himself with the
Even in Moscow embassy and
into the center of the
spying activity
evaluated as ex-
is
tremely amazing, having no equivalent in history. 11
Sorge was unaware that there were by then several other penetrations that
Moscow
considered no
less
"amazing."
Moscow on both German and
It
was Sorge's spy
nonetheless, that provided
with
human
Japanese policy.
sources
its
best intelligence
ring,
from
During the greater part of Sorge's eight years in Tokyo the Kremlin considered Japan the main threat to the Soviet Union. The Great Depression of the early 1930s destroyed the shallow roots of Japanese democracy. For most Japanese soldiers the only answer to the
problems created by the Depression was strong government
at
home
and expansion abroad. The Depression created a climate of opinion in which the army was able to end its subjection to the politicians and win popular support for
its territorial
ambitions.
In September 193 1 Japanese troops stationed near the Japanese-
owned South Manchurian Railway blew up
a section of the line.
They
then accused Chinese troops of responsibility for the explosion and used
what became euphemistically known
as the
"Manchurian Incident" as The Japanese govern-
a pretext to begin the occupation of Manchuria.
ment accepted a League of Nations drawal of its troops, but
resolution calling for the with-
swept Japan the politicians proved powerless to impose iheir will on the soldiers. Early in 1932 the army established the Manchurian puppet state of
in the face of the nationalist fervor that
Manchukuo under
the nominal rule of the last of the
Manchu
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
Sigint,
now
emperors. Japan
177
controlled a long land frontier with the Soviet
Union. Until the mid- 1930s
Moscow
regarded
Germany
as a
For several years
serious military threat than Japan.
it
much
growth of Nazism with an equanimity bordering on complacency, garding
it
less
viewed the re-
as a sign of the death throes of German capitalism rather than
German war of conquest in the East. Right up moment when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January 1933, the Comintern urged German Communists to concenthe portent of a future to the
trate their fire
enemy on
socialist enemy on the left rather than the Nazi Though Maxim Litvinov, commissar for foreign
on the
the right.
warned of the Nazi regime's "most extreme anti-Soviet ideas" end of 1933, he emphasized that the main threat continued to come from Japan. Over the next few years Soviet policy toward Japan and Germany, like that of the West, was based on appeasement. Its overriding priority was to avoid war with either. 12 On his arrival in Tokyo in September 1933 Sorge was ordered "to give very careful study to the question of whether or not Japan was affairs,
in a general review of Soviet foreign policy at the
planning to attack the U.S.S.R."
He
wrote after his arrest eight years
later:
This was for
many
to
me and my
it
was the
years the most important duty assigned
group;
it
would not be
sole object of
U.S.S.R., as
it
my
far
wrong
to say that
mission in Japan.
.
.
.
The
viewed the prominent role and attitude taken
by the Japanese military churian incident, had
in foreign policy after the
come
Man-
to harbor a deeply implanted
suspicion that Japan was planning to attack the Soviet
Union, a suspicion so strong that
my
frequently expressed
opinions to the contrary were not always fully appreciated in
Moscow. 13 If Moscow's fears of Japanese attack were sometimes exaggerated, they were not without foundation. The Japanese army was split for several
years into
two warring
factions: the
Kodo-ha, which wanted war with
whose ambitions were cena failed coup d'etat by the Kodo-
Russia, and the less adventurous Tosei-ha, tered
on China. Not
until 1936, after
ha, did the Tosei-ha gain a clear victory over their rivals.
Western injunctions to Japan not to
interfere in
By then
China were, said the
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
178
Japanese minister of war, "like telling a a
woman who was
open war
man
in July 1937,
it
not to get involved with
By
the time Japan began
had already established
indirect control over
already pregnant by him."
14 of northeast China.
much
When Hede Massing met
Richard Sorge
in
1935 for the
first
time since 1929, she found him visibly changed by his years in China
and Japan. Though he was still "startlingly good-looking" and a dedicated Communist; "little of the charm of the romantic, idealistic scholar was left." A Japanese journalist described him as "a typical, quick-tempered, hard-drinking." 15 swashbuckling, arrogant Nazi .
.
.
That image helped Sorge win the confidence of the German embassy. His closest contacts within the embassy were Colonel Eugen Ott, mili-
from March 1934, and Mrs. Ott, with whom Sorge had one of his numerous affairs. Sorge saw much of the information on the Japanese armed forces and military planning that Ott forwarded to Berlin, as well as many of the documents received by the embassy on tary attache
German policy in April 1938,
Japanese
in the
affairs
important
Far East.
When Ott was promoted to ambassador
Sorge had breakfast with him each day, briefing him on
and drafting some of
member
his reports to Berlin.
The most
of Sorge's spy ring, Hotsumi Ozaki, had growing
access to Japanese policy-making as a
member of the brains
trust of the
leading statesman Prince Konoye. Late in 1935 he was able to photo-
graph a planning document for the following year, which indicated that
was no immediate likelihood of a Japanese attack on Russia. Sorge correctly forecast the invasion of China in July 1937, once again providing reassurance that there were no plans for an invasion of Sithere
beria.
16
The
officially
authorized Soviet eulogies of Richard Sorge
all
contain at least one deliberate distortion, which has not so far been detected in the West. Sorge's intelligence reports are to conceal the successes of Soviet sigint, a in the era of glasnost, remains officially
Sigint
may
commonly used
form of intelligence
unmentionable
that,
even
in the U.S.S.R.
well have been an even
intelligence than Sorge himself.
more important source of Japanese The single piece of intelligence that
probably did most to arouse Soviet fears of a Japanese attack was a decrypted telegram from the Japanese military attache in Moscow, Lieutenant Colonel Yukio Kasahara, a supporter of the Kodo-ha faction, to the
General Staff in March 1931,
six
months before the "Man-
churian Incident" and over two years before Sorge's arrival in Tokyo:
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
Sigint,
It will
179
be [Japan's] unavoidable destiny to clash with the
U.S.S.R. sooner or
war comes, the
later.
.
.
The sooner
.
better for us.
the Soviet-Japanese
We must realize that with every
day the situation develops more favorably for the U.S.S.R. In short,
I
a speedy
hope the authorities will make up their minds for war with the Soviet Union and initiate policies
accordingly.
Moscow
"Manchurian Incident" in September was the prelude to the attack on the Soviet Union advocated by Kasahara. It was further alarmed by remarks by Hirota, the Japanese ambassador in Moscow, to a visiting Japanese general, reported in Unsurprisingly,
feared that the
another intercepted Japanese telegram: Putting aside the question of whether or not Japan should
make war
against the Soviet Union, there
is
the need to take
a strong policy vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, with the resolve to fight the U.S.S.R. at
any time necessary. The
however, should not be defense against rather, the occupation of Eastern Siberia.
In the winter of 1931-32 scare.
The Comintern
Moscow
objective,
Communism
but,
17
experienced a major Japanese war
secretariat harshly
reprimanded foreign com-
rades for failing to grasp "the intimate connection between the Japanese
Manchuria and the preparation of a great anti-Soviet war." it demanded immediate action by member parties to sabotage arms production for, and shipment to, Japan: attack on
In February 1932
Decisive mobilization of the masses
against the transportation of
which
travel to
is
required, primarily
weapons and military
Japan along the tracks of every
supplies, capitalist
railway and from the ports of every capitalist country. 18
So alarmed had Moscow become that in March 1932 it took the remarkable step of announcing: "We are in possession of documents which originate from officials of the most senior military circles in Japan, and contain plans for an attack on the U.S.S.R. and the seizure of
its
Even more remarkably, Izvestia published decrypted from intercepted Japanese telegrams revealing both Kasahara's
territory."
extracts
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
180
appeal for "a speedy war" and Hirota's call for the occupation of Siberia.
19
Moscow's willingness to publish this dramatic evidence of the Japanese menace derived, at least in part, from the knowledge that the Japanese were already aware that their diplomatic codes and ciphers had been broken. During 1931 the sacked American code breaker Herbert Yardley published a sensational volume of memoirs revealing that the United States "Black Chamber" had decrypted Japanese diplomatic traffic. There was an immediate diplomatic uproar, with the Japanese foreign minister publicly accusing the United States of a
"breach of faith" by intercepting Japanese communications at the
Washington conference ten years
earlier.
20
In the spring of 1932 Kasahara, whose call for "a speedy war" had so alarmed Moscow a year before, was appointed chief of the Russian section in the Second Department of the Japanese General Staff. His successor as military attache in Moscow, also a supporter of the Kodo-ha faction, Torashiro Kawabe, reported to Tokyo that a Russo-Japanese war was "unavoidable." Kasahara replied that military preparations were complete: "War against Russia is necessary for Japan 21 to consolidate Manchuria." For the next few years the main priority of Soviet cryptanalysis, as of Sorge's espionage ring, was to monitor the danger of a Japanese attack that was never to materialize. Perhaps the main sigint success of the mid- 1930s was in monitoring the prolonged negotiations in Berlin between Baron Joachim von Ribbentrop and the Japanese military attache (later ambassador), General Hiroshi Oshima, which culminated in the Anti-Comintern Pact between Germany and Japan, officially announced on November 25, 1936. The German embassy in Tokyo, which shared most of its secrets with Sorge, was in only distant touch with the progress of the negotiations. Thanks to sigint, Moscow was in closer touch. In the summer of
1936 an agent in Berlin run by Walter Krivitsky, the in the Netherlands, gained access to
book and
its files
NKVD
resident
both the Japanese embassy's code
on the German- Japanese negotiations. "From then
on," boasted Krivitsky, "all correspondence between General
Oshima
and Tokyo flowed regularly through our hands." 22 Telegrams between Tokyo and the Japanese embassy in Moscow decrypted by the NKVD/ Fourth Department joint sigint unit were, no doubt, a supplementary source of intelligence on the progress of negotiations.
The published
version of the Anti-Comintern Pact merely pro-
vided for an exchange of information on Comintern activities and coop-
Sigint,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
181
A secret protocol, however, added that became the victim of "an unprovoked [Soviet] attack or threat of attack," both would immediately consult together on the action to take and neither would do anything to "ease the situation of the U.S.S.R.," a tortuous formula into which it was easy for the Kremlin to read more sinister intentions. Only three days after the publication of the Anti-Comintern Pact, Litvinov, the commissar for foreign affairs, announced to a Congress of Soviets: eration in preventive measures. if either of the signatories
As
for the published
Japanese-German agreement ...
it is
only a cover for another agreement which was simulta-
neously discussed and initialed, probably also signed, and
which was not published and
is
not intended for publication.
what I say, was precisely to the working out of this secret document, in which the word communism is not even mentioned, that the fifteen months of negotiations between the Japanese military attache and the German super-diplomat were deI
declare, with a full sense of responsibility for
that
it
voted.
23
Litvinov did not publicly identify the source of his knowledge of the secret protocol, but his speech contains a curious allusion to
code
breaking:
It is not surprising that it is assumed by many that the German-Japanese agreement is written in a special code in which anti-communism means something entirely different from the dictionary meaning of this word, and that people
decipher this code in different ways. 24
For his assistance to Soviet sigint Krivitsky was recommended for the Order of Lenin, though he had yet to receive his award when he defected in the following autumn. 25
The
success of the joint
OGPU/Fourth Department
sigint unit in
breaking British diplomatic codes and ciphers during the 1930s also
owed much
to assistance
from espionage. The OGPU's
of the Foreign Office resulted from what has
first
penetration
become known
in intelli-
gence tradecraft as a "walk-in." In 1929 a cipher clerk in the Foreign Office
Communications Department, Ernest Holloway Oldham, then
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
182
accompanying a British trade delegation in Paris, walked into the Soviet Embassy, gave his name as Scott and asked to see the military attache. He was seen instead by an OGPU officer, Vladimir Voynovich, who introduced himself as "Major Vladimir." Oldham announced that he worked for the Foreign Office and had with him a British diplomatic cipher, which he offered to sell for $2,000 U.S. Voynovich took the cipher and disappeared into an adjoining room, where he had it photographed. Possibly suspecting a provocation, he returned to the waiting
Oldham, put on a show of indignation, threw the cipher into his lap, denounced him as a swindler, and ordered him to leave. 26 The cryptanalysts in the OGPU/Fourth Department sigint unit quickly identified Oldham's cipher as genuine. Moscow Center reproved Voynovich for failing to give Scott money to establish a connection with him, ordered him to be given the $2,000 he had asked for, and insisted that contact be reestablished.
the
To Voynovich's embarrassment,
OGPU officer who had followed Oldham back to his Paris lodging
had noted the wrong address, and could not trace him. It took long, painstaking inquiries by Hans Galleni, a Dutch-based OGPU illegal known to his agents as Hans, before Oldham was tracked down in London in 1930. 27 Galleni met him one evening in Cromwell Road on his way back from work, addressed him by name, and made a short prepared speech: "I regret that we didn't meet in Paris. I know of the grave error made by Major Vladimir. He has since been removed and punished.
I
have come to give you what
is
rightfully yours."
Then
Galleni thrust an envelope into Oldham's hand, crossed the road, and
disappeared into a crowd of office workers returning home. Bystanders, seeing
Oldham clutch at his chest and his knees crumple, came to his Oldham stammered his embarrassed thanks, picked himself
assistance.
up,
and went on
When
his
way.
he opened the envelope at
home he found
that
it
con-
tained $2,000 and details of a further rendezvous with Galleni. There is
some evidence
that
Oldham went
to the rendezvous intending to
OGPU. But Galleni persuaded him to accept more money and provide further information on Foreign Office ciphers, security procedures, and his colleagues in the Communications Department. Though Galleni tried to encourage Oldham by taking him and
break off contact with the
his wife to expensive restaurants, the strain of the
double life gradually proved too much. In September 1933 Oldham was found unconscious
on the kitchen floor of his house in Pembroke Gardens, was rushed to a hospital, and pronounced dead on arrival. An inquest found that he
Sigint,
had taken
his
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
life,
183
while of "unsound mind," by "coal gas suffocation."
Galleni returned to the Continent.
OGPU
The
used the information supplied by
Oldham on
personnel of the Communications Department as the basis of a
the
new
Two OGPU illegals were sent to Geneva, where sevOldham's colleagues were working as cipher clerks with the British delegation to the League of Nations. One of the illegals, a former Russian sailor who had lived in the United States, proved so inept that the delegation accurately suspected him of being a Soviet spy. The other illegal, Henri Christian (Han) Pieck, a successful and convivial Dutch artist fired by enthusiasm for the Comintern, was run at different times by Hans Galleni (who had controlled Oldham), by the ill-fated Ignace Poretsky (liquidated in 1937), and by Teodor Maly (of whom more later). Under their direction Pieck used his considerable charm to such good effect in Geneva that he became a popular figure with a wide circle of British officials and journalists. He invited several of the cipher clerks to stay at his house in The Hague, lavished hospitality on them, and 28 lent them money. The man whom he selected as most suitable for recruitment was Captain John Herbert King, who had joined the Communications Department as a "temporary clerk" in 1934 (a job without pension 29 rights). He was estranged from his wife, had an American mistress, and found it difficult to live within his modest income. Pieck cultivated King with great patience as well as skill. On one occasion Pieck and his wife took King and his mistress for an expensive touring holiday in Spain, staying in the best hotels. Mrs. Pieck later described the whole holiday as a "real ordeal," and King and his mistress "incredibly boring." 30 Han Pieck made no attempt to recruit King in Geneva, but waited till he returned to the Foreign Office Communications Department in 1935, then visited him in London. Even then Pieck concealed his connection with the NKVD. Instead he told King that a Dutch banker who was anxious for inside information on international relations could make them both a lot of money if King would supply it. King agreed. recruiting drive.
eral of
To British
give himself a legitimate base in Britain, Pieck invited a
shop
fitter
named Conrad Parlanti, whom he had met through him in setting up a decorating business
the cipher clerks, to join with for
which he would provide the capital. Parlanti agreed and the two took over a house in Buckingham Gate. Pieck kept a floor for his use, which included a locked room where he photographed the
men own
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
184
documents supplied by King. 31
A file seen by Gordievsky indicates that
some of the documents were considered so important that they were shown to Stalin himself. They included telegrams from the British embassy ers.
in Berlin reporting
meetings with Hitler and other Nazi lead-
32
In October 1935 another and ultimately even agent, first
Donald Maclean, entered the Foreign
more important Soviet Maclean was the
Office.
of a group of British agents recruited at graduation from
Cam-
bridge University or soon after to succeed in penetrating Whitehall's corridors of power.
The
KGB still considers the five leading Cambridge
it has ever recruited. During World War they became known as "the London Five" (by then all were run from the London residency) or simply as "the Five." After the release of the film The Magnificent Seven, they became known 33 in the First Chief Directorate as "the Magnificent Five." The first two of the Five to be identified publicly were Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, who defected to Moscow in 1951. Kim Philby was christened the Third Man by the British media after his defection in 1963. The Fourth Man, Anthony Blunt, was unmasked in 1979. During the 1980s
moles the ablest group of foreign agents the Second
the media hunt for the Fifth
ended tity,
the
Man
in a series of blind alleys
followed a variety of false
and mistaken
identifications.
trails that
His iden-
discovered by Gordievsky while preparing the classified history of
FCD
Third Department,
is
revealed in this chapter for the
first
time.
Unlike Oldham and King, who sold Foreign Office secrets for money, the motives of the Magnificent Five were ideological. The bait that
drew them
into
work
KGB was anti-fascism after the Nazi
for the
conquest of power in Germany. Anthony Blunt explained his recruitment thus after his exposure in 1979: In the mid- 1930s poraries that the
it
seemed to
me and to many of my contem-
Communist Party and Russia
constituted
the only firm bulwark against fascism, since the Western
democracies were taking an uncertain and compromising attitude towards
Germany.
I
was persuaded by Guy Burgess
could best serve the cause of anti-fascism by joining
that
I
him
in his
work
for the Russians. 34
own
Sigint,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
185
A majority of Cambridge undergraduates in the mid-thirties were apathetically Conservative.
Though
the Conservatives had the largest po-
clubs in Oxford and Cambridge, they appeared intellectually moribund with a general distaste for campaigning zeal. A writer in the Cambridge Review noted at the beginning of 1934: litical
Political activity in the older universities
during the
last
few
years has been largely confined to the Socialists, and, to an increasing degree, to Communists.
.
.
.
The Russian
experi-
ment has aroused very great interest within the universities. It is felt to be bold and constructive, and youth, which is always impatient of the cautious delays and obstruction of its elders,
is
disposed to regard sympathetically (often irrespec-
tive of political opinion) this
and
political order.
attempt to found a
new
social
35
The growing sympathy among undergraduate idealists for "the Russian
much to do with events in Britain as with events What Kim Philby considered "the real turning point*' in his own political development came, as for many young Soviet sympathizexperiment" had as in Russia.
ers,
with "the demoralization and rout of the Labour Party in 1931."
The
Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald in Government in August 1931 was followed by Labour's rout at the polls two months great "betrayal" by the
agreeing to head a Conservative-dominated National
later.
To It
Philby:
seemed incredible that the [Labour] party should be so which reaction could
helpless against the reserve strength
mobilise in time of
crisis.
More important
still,
the fact that
a supposedly sophisticated electorate had been stampeded by the cynical propaganda of the day threw serious doubt on the validity
of the assumptions underlying democracy as a
whole. 36
While Labour had
lost its
way
in the depression, Russia
midst of the great economic transformation of the
first
was
in the
Five Year Plan.
The Magnificent Five were seduced not by the brutal reality of Stalin's Russia but by a myth image of the socialist millennium: a workerpeasant state courageously building a new society free from the social
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
186
snobbery of the British class system. This myth image was so powerful that it
it
proved capable of surviving even
visits to
seduced. Malcolm Muggeridge, perhaps the
Russia by those
Moscow during the mid-thirties, wrote of the radical who came from Britain to Stalin's Russia: nalists in
Their delight in
all
whom
best of the British jour-
pilgrims
they saw and were told, and the expres-
sion they gave to this delight, constitute unquestionably one
of the wonders of our age. There were earnest advocates of the
humane
killing of cattle
headquarters of the
OGPU
who
looked up at the massive
with tears of gratitude in their
eyes, earnest advocates of proportional representation
eagerly assented Proletariat
when
who
the necessity for a Dictatorship of the
was explained
to them, earnest
clergymen
who
reverently turned the pages of atheistic literature, earnest pacifists
who watched
delightedly tanks rattle across
Red
Square and bombing planes darken the sky, earnest townplanning specialists
who
stood outside overcrowded ram-
shackle tenements and muttered: "If only like this in
we had something
England!" The almost unbelievable credulity of
these mostly university-educated tourists astonished even Soviet officials used to handling foreign visitors. 37
The American correspondent in Moscow William same naivete among American visitors to Stalin's They
are wildly enthusiastic over
logical; visit
all
White noted the
Russia:
they see but not always
they were enthusiastic before they
only doubly convinces them.
C.
A
came and
their
schoolteacher from
Brooklyn was on a tour of one of the newspaper plants. She saw a machine which did wonders with the paper that was it. "Really, that is remarkable," she commented. "Such an amazing invention could be produced only in a country like yours, where labor is free, unexploited and working for one end. I shall write a book about what I have seen." She was a trifle embarrassed when she walked to the rear and saw the sign "Made in Brooklyn, N.Y." 38
fed to
For the Magnificent
Five, however, the
against fascism in the ranks of the
heady idealism of a secret war International was an
Communist
Sigint,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
187
even more powerful inducement than sympathy for the Soviet Union in
drawing them into espionage for the
NKVD. The anti-fascist crusade
Cambridge moles was mounted by Munzenberg, the great virtuoso of Comintern propaganda and originator in the 1920s of the "Innocents' Clubs" designed to "organize that led to the recruitment of the Willi
Communist-dominated front organizations. 39 During the Nazi anti-Communist witch hunt that followed the burning of the Reichstag, the German parliament building, on February 27, 1933, blamed by the Nazis on the Communists, Munzenberg was forced to move his headquarters from Berlin to Paris. 40 There in June 1933 he founded what proved to be the most influential of all the Innocents' Clubs, the World Committee for the Relief of the Victims of German the intellectuals" in
Fascism.
The
who worked
writer Arthur Koestler,
for
it,
noted that, as
usual with the Innocents' Clubs, "great care was taken that no nist
—except a few
busse and
J.
B. S.
known names, such
internationally
Haldane
Commu-
as Henri Bar-
—should be connected with the Committee."
The French section was led by a distinguished Hungarian emigre, Count Karolyi. The international chairman was a naive British Labour peer, Lord Marley. The great physicist Albert Einstein also agreed to join the committee,
Their participation
and soon found himself described as "president." made the committee appear a nonparty philan-
thropic organization. In reality, wrote Koestler later, the Paris secretarthat ran it was "a purely Communist caucus, headed by Munzenberg and controlled by the Comintern. Munzenberg himself worked in iat
.
room
.
.
World Committee's premises, but no outsider ever learned about this. It was as simple as that." 41 From his Paris base Munzenberg organized the publication in August 1933 of the most effective piece of propaganda in Comintern history, the Brown Book on the Hitler Terror and the Burning of the a large
in the
Reichstag.* 2 Quickly translated into over twenty languages ranging
from Japanese to Yiddish, the Brown Book became,
in
Koestler's
phrase, "the bible of the anti-fascist crusade." Koestler claimed, with
some exaggeration,
that
of any pamphlet since
it
"probably had the strongest political impact
Tom Paine's Common Sense demanded indepen-
dence for the American colonies a century and a half earlier." 43
According to the
title
page, the
book was "prepared by the
for the Victims of
German Fascism (PRESIDENT:
EINSTEIN) with an introduction by
LORD MARLEY." "My name,"
World Committee
wrote Einstein, "appeared in the English and French editions as
if I
had
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
188
it. That is not true. I did not write a word of it." But since it was all in a good cause, the great physicist decided not to complain. "The fact that I did not write it," he said genially, "does not matter." 44 Lord Marley's introduction, written from the "House of Lords, London SW1" gave the fraudulent volume an air of establishment respectability sensationand scrupulous veracity. "We have not used the most al .. documents," the noble lord assured his readers. "Every statement made in this book has been carefully verified and is typical of a number of similar cases." 45 Lord Marley was naive enough to have believed his
written
.
.
.
.
own
introduction.
Like most successful deceptions, the Brown Book contained a
But fact, as Koestler later acknowledged, and "brazen bluff' by "the Comintern's intelligence apparat." Most of the writing, according to Koestler, was done
significant element of fact.
was mixed with
forgeries
by Miinzenberg's chief
assistant,
Katz was a Czech Jew and,
like
Otto Katz
{alias
Andre Simone). 46
Munzenberg, an unconventional, coswho seemed far
mopolitan Central European of great personal charm,
removed from the doctrinaire Stalinism expected of Communist Party During the 1920s Katz had built up a remarkable range of contacts in publishing, journalism, the theater and the film industry. "In Hollywood," wrote Babette Gross, Miinzenberg's "life partner," "he charmed German emigre actors, directors, and writers. Katz had an extraordinary fascination for women, a quality which greatly helped him in organizing committees and campaigns." 47 Koestler agreed that Katz was "attractive to women, particularly to the middle-aged, wellintentioned, politically active type, and used them adroitly to smooth
apparatchiks.
his path":
One
of Otto's tasks was ... to spy on Willy for the apparat.
Willy knew this and did not care. Willy needed Otto, but he hardly bothered to disguise his contempt for him. of
all his
... In spite
seediness, Otto was, paradoxically, a very likeable
human
being. He had the generosity of the adventurer and he could be warmhearted, spontaneous and helpful so long
—
as
it
did not conflict with his interests. 48
In writing the
Brown Book, Katz was
assisted
by Alexander Abusch,
former editor of the German Communist Party
(KPD) newspaper Rote postwar East German government,
Fahne and later a minister in the and by a series of other Communist journalists. 49 Attempts by outsiders
Sigint,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
to identify the exact composition of the
of the Victims of German
Book were
found
for the Relief
Fascism responsible for producing the
invariably frustrated.
visiting Paris
World Committee
189
Brown
A curious American radical journalist
his inquiries trapped inside
an unhelpfully circular
explanation:
I
tried
asked
hard to find out
"Who
is
who
constituted the
Committee and
"We are." I made "A group of people
the Committee?" Answer:
further enquiry:
"Who are we?"
Answer:
men." "What group The answer came back: "Our Committee." 50
interested in defending these innocent
of people?"
The Brown Book countered the Nazi allegation that the Reichstag fire was the result of a Communist conspiracy with the equally fraudulent but more convincing claim that it was a Nazi plot. Forged documents were used to demonstrate that Marinus van der Lubbe, the Dutch was part of a plot devised by the Nazi in which a group of storm troopers had entered the Reichstag through an underground passage that connected it with the official residence of its Nazi president, Hermann Goering, started the blaze, and made their escape by the same route. The fictitious conspiracy was enlivened with sexual scandal based on bogus evidence that van der Lubbe was involved with leading Nazi arsonist responsible for the
fire,
master propagandist Joseph Goebbels
homosexuals. 51
The basic hypothesis of the Brown Book,
instantly popular with
most anti-Nazis and subsequently embellished with further fabrications, was accepted until 1962, when the West German journalist Fritz Tobias demolished both Nazi and Communist conspiracy theories and
demonstrated that
in all probability
van der Lubbe had
set fire to the
Reichstag single-handedly in the vain hope of provoking a popular rising.
52
Tobias's revelations proved
unwelcome
in the
German Demo-
which sponsored further forgeries to reestablish the Brown Book version of events. During the 1970s the most skillful of these forgeries, fabricated by a Croat emigre, Edouard Calic, successfully deceived an International Committee for Scientific Research on the Causes and Consequences of the Second World War, subsidized by the foreign ministry and press office of the Federal Republic and including some distinguished West German historians, until these documents too were conclusively exposed as forgeries. 53 Miinzenberg used the Brown Book as the basis for one of his cratic Republic,
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
190
most ambitious
stunts. In the
summer
gained approval from the Comintern
of 1933 he visited
Moscow and
OMS for the creation of an Inter-
Committee of Jurists composed of sympathetic non-Communists who would pronounce with apparent judicial impartiality on the causes of the Reichstag fire and find the Nazis guilty. 54 On his return to Paris Munzenberg drew up plans with Katz for a Legal Inquiry into national
London shortly before the Communist fellow conspirators
the Burning of the Reichstag, to be held in trial
of van der Lubbe and his alleged
opened
in Leipzig.
—
The chairman of the "Legal Inquiry" or "Counter-Trial" as it came to be called was a leading British fellow traveler, D. N. Pritt, K.C., a prominent Labour M.P. and barrister who later defended Stalin's show trials against the "unscrupulous abuse" they received in
—
England and was eventually expelled from the Labour Party
for sup-
porting the Soviet invasion of Finland. 55 Pritt's colleagues on the Inter-
Committee of Jurists were Arthur Garfield Hays, an American champion of civil liberties; Georg Branting, son of Sweden's first Socialist prime minister; Maitres Moro-Giafferi and Gaston Bergery from France; Valdemar Huidt from Denmark; Dr. Betsy Bakker-Nort from the Netherlands; and Maitre Pierre Vermeylen from Belgium. Otto Katz traveled to London to organize the Counter-Trial. Foreign Office files reveal that though Katz was on the MI 5 Black List as a "red-hot communist," he was allowed into Britain "as the result of intervention by Mr. Arthur Henderson [the former foreign secretary] and other members of the Labour Party" sympathetic to the CounterTrial, who were probably unaware of Katz's links with Soviet intelligence. Despite MI5 opposition, the Home Office allowed Katz to make a second visit later in the year "rather than face Labour Parliamentary] Q[uestion]s." 56 Once in London, Katz stayed hidden behind the scenes as, in Koestler's words, "the invisible organizer of the Committee." But national
he succeeded
brilliantly in cloaking the
Counter-Trial in an aura of
establishment respectability.
On September 13 a reception was held for the international by Lord Marley and Sidney Bernstein in the prestigious Mayfair surroundings of the Hotel Washington. 57 The Counter-Trial opened next day at Lincoln's Inn in the Law Society's Court Room, thus giving
jurists
the proceedings the appearance of a British
Crown
Court.
An
opening
address by the Labour lawyer Sir Stafford Cripps, K.C., later a wartime
ambassador to Russia and postwar chancellor of the exchequer, emphasized that "none of the lawyers on the Commission belonged to the
Sigint,
political party
many."
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
[i.e.,
191
the Communists] of the accused persons in Ger-
58
Katz was understandably pleased with himself. The Counterlater boasted, had become "an unofficial tribunal whose man59 date was conferred by the conscience of the world." Katz succeeded in combining respectability with melodrama. Witnesses came in disguise. The court doors were locked so that no one could leave while Trial,
he
the chairman, claimed
sensitive witnesses
were giving evidence.
dramatically that
Ramsay MacDonald's National Government was
Pritt,
60 trying to obstruct the Counter-Trial.
As was a
the carefully staged proceedings dragged on, however, there
slight air of anticlimax.
Wells became bored.
Some prominent sympathizers
And though
like
H. G.
the jurists do not seem to have
suspected the dubious origins of some of the evidence presented to
them, they were
less
emphatic
in their
Katz had hoped. Instead of ending
conclusion than Miinzenberg and
in a ringing denunciation of the
Nazi
more cautiously that "grave the Reichstag was set on fire by, or
regime, the Counter-Trial concluded
grounds existed for suspecting that
on behalf
of,
leading personalities of the National Socialist Party." 61
Such mild disappointment as Miinzenberg and Katz may have felt
with the verdict of the Counter-Trial was quickly dispelled by the
trial itself at
Leipzig,
Nazis. Despite the
which turned into a propaganda
German judge's
of some of the key Nazi witnesses defendant, Georgi Dimitrov, the
efforts to assist
disaster for the
them, the evidence
The leading Communist Bulgarian former head of the Cominfell
to pieces.
and a future Bulgarian ComGoering became so irate at the collapse of the Nazi case that he lost his temper and shouted 62 at Dimitrov, "You wait till I get you out of the power of this court!" Van der Lubbe, who had insisted from the start that he was solely responsible, was found guilty and executed. All the Communist defendants were cleared. The public collapse of the Nazi conspiracy theory in open court served to reinforce the alternative Communist conspiracy theory of the Brown Book. A Second Brown Book was produced by Miinzenberg, Katz, and their collaborators to exploit Nazi embarrassment at the Leipzig Trial, amend the less-convincing parts of the first edition, and include further fabrications. 63 tern
Western European Bureau
munist prime minister, made a
in Berlin
brilliant defense.
Like Munzenberg's earlier Innocents' Clubs, the Reichstag Fire campaign was designed to serve the purposes of the Comintern and Soviet
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
192
intelligence apparat as well as to
win a propaganda
victory.
Though
his
primary aim was to conquer public opinion, he also hoped to lure some
war against fascism under Comintern direction. Preparations for a recruiting drive among young British intellectual "innocents" began at the same time as preparations for the Counter-Trial. One of Munzenberg's targets was Cambridge UniverBritish intellectuals into a secret
sity.
His emissary, Countess Karolyi,
later recalled the naive enthusi-
asm she found among Cambridge Communists when Munzenberg
sent
her to collect funds for the Counter-Trial and Dimitrov's defense in Leipzig:
remember my trip to Cambridge in the rickety car of a young communist undergraduate who, on the way, explained to me dolefully that it was imperative, though most regrettaI
ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge should be razed to the ground when the Proletarian Dictatorship was proclaimed. For centuries, he said, they had been the symbols of bourgeois privilege. He seemed suspicious of my genuine revolutionary spirit when
ble, that the beautiful
I
expressed
my
doubts as to the necessity for demolition. In
Cambridge we drove
where whiteflannelled undergraduates were playing tennis on perfectly kept green courts. We were received most enthusiastically. It was odd to see students of such a famous university, obvito
one of the
colleges,
ously upper-class, with well-bred accents, speak about Soviet
Russia as the land of promise. 64
Munzenberg's main contact in Cambridge, who probably arranged Countess Karolyi's visit, was Maurice Dobb, an economics don at
Pembroke College (and about Dobb's
later at Trinity).
Communism. On
There was nothing covert
the founding of the
of Great Britain in 1920 he became probably the
Communist Party
first
British
academic
and he made Union extolling the achievements of Soviet society. In 1925 King George V demanded to know why such a well-known Communist was allowed to indoctrinate the young. But though Dobb attracted the attention of the Special Branch and MI5, it was as an open Communist propagandist and militant in front organizations such as Munzenberg's League Against Imperialism, rather than because of any suspected to carry a Party card,
frequent speeches at the Cambridge
involvement with Soviet intelligence. In 1931, together with
Roy
Pas-
Sigint,
cal,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
a young modern-languages
don
at
193
Pembroke, Dobb founded the
Communist cell at Red House, his home in Chesterton Dobb was naive as well as militant. In proselytizing for Communism and the Comintern's secret war against international fasuniversity's
first
Lane. 65 But
cism,
it is
quite possible that he failed to realize that he
as a talent spotter for the
was
also acting
KGB.
The bait devised by Munzenberg to lure Cambridge innocents and other young British intellectuals into working for Soviet intelligence was the heroic example allegedly being set by German workers in
forming secret Funfergruppen ("groups [or "rings"] of five") to
launch a proletarian counterattack against Nazism. The phrase "group (or "ring") of five" later
became confused with "the Magnificent Five"
and other descriptions applied by the KGB to the five most successful Cambridge moles during and after the Second World War. The origins of the Funfergruppen, however, went back to the revolutionary under-
ground in Tsarist Russia. The first ring of five had been formed in 1 869 by the student revolutionary Sergei Nechayev,
whom
the model for Peter Verkhovensky in The Devils.
saw him
Dostoyevsky made Though Dostoyevsky
and
as a psychopath, the conspirators of the People's Will
their
Bolshevik successors regarded Nechayev as a revolutionary visionary. 66
During the tense preceded Hitler's
rise to
final
revived the rings of five. In the ing
its
Weimar Republic, which German Communist Party (KPD) summer of 1932 the KPD began replacyears of the
power, the
existing semi-open cells of ten to thirty
members with
Funfergruppen, so called in honor of Nechayev. Not five
had exactly
five
all
secret
the groups of
members. Only the leader of each group was
supposed to know the identity and addresses of the other members; and he alone had the authority to make contact with the next
level in the
Party hierarchy. In the face of the challenge from Hitler the reality, as
KPD
behaved
in
Koestler discovered, like "a castrated giant." 67 Before the
Nazi takeover it concentrated its fire not on the Nazi Party but on its main rival on the left, the socialist SPD. After the Nazi takeover, many Communists switched their support to Hitler. The bulk of what Communist resistance survived in the Nazi Third Reich was not an organized underground but an ill-organized opposition among the badly paid construction workers of Hitler's labor army. 68
however, disguised the reality of the
The Comintern,
KPD's ignominious
failure to
counter the Nazi challenge by claiming that the Party had gone under-
ground, and that the Funfergruppen had created "a new subterranean
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
194
revolutionary
The
Germany
.
.
.
dogging Hitler's every footstep." 69
was Semyon
chief propagandist of the groups of five
OGPU
and associate of MiinzenLondon under the alias Ernst Henri (later Henry or Ghenri). In August and September 1933 he wrote three articles entitled "The Revolutionary Movement in Nazi Germany" for the leading British left-wing weekly, the New Statesman. The first, subtitled "The Groups of Five (TunfergrupNikolayevich Rostovsky, an
berg,
who had
illegal
established himself as a journalist in
pen')," revealed the existence of the groups publicly for the
and made extravagant claims There
is
first
time
for their success:
perhaps no other example in history of a secret
revolutionary
movement with
a completely equipped organi-
zation and an effective influence extending over the whole
country, being able to develop in so short a time.
groups of
almost
try;
important
The groups liberals,
buried
five
cover practically the whole of
all
.
.
the factories and the majority of the
offices are
These indus-
more
honeycombed with them.
many former socialists, republicans, have who, "under Communist leadership
allegedly contained
and Catholics
all
.
German
previous differences and pursue only one policy
.
.
.
—anti-Fas-
cism." In addition to printing clandestine propaganda, coordinating
demonstrations, and collecting intelligence on the "Hitler Terror," the five had succeeded in infiltrating the Nazi labor movement and were preparing to paralyze the system from within. The example of the Funfergruppen thus demonstrated the need for infiltration and intelligence gathering in the war against fascism. Nazism's secret networks, argued Henri, were already so powerful and widespread that they formed a covert "fascists' international." It followed that anti70 fascists also must organize secretly as well as openly. Wildly exaggerated though it was, Henri's romantic account of groups of five engaged in a proletarian crusade against Nazi tyranny struck so deep a chord in the New Statesman and many of its readers that they suspended their disbelief. The editor, Kingsley Martin, insisted that Henri's "facts" were "not open to question." 71 In March 1934 Henri spelled out his arguments in greater detail 11 in Hitler over Europe?, a book twice reprinted over the next few months. It would, said The Times, "make the democrat's flesh posi73 Henri's message in this and later writings was that the tively creep."
groups of
Sigint,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
choice confronting his readers was simple and stark
195
—between Berlin
and Moscow: "In the modern opposing forces and on the verge of its final transformation, there is no such thing as political and social impartiality, nor can there be." It was 74 sheer liberal escapism to look for a middle way. In private meetings world, torn between [these] gigantic
with sympathizers, Henri put the same point more personally.
"You
75 English," he would say, "are such liberal do-gooders."
The decent
values of liberal democracy were thus plausibly
The
portrayed simply as one facet of appeasement.
implication of
Henri's message was that anti-fascist British intellectuals, fascism amounted to ity" (a
key word
more than mere words, should
if
their anti-
display "solidar-
Miinzenberg's lexicon for intellectual innocents)
in
German workers by joining in their secret war To Guy Burgess in particular, the most flamboyant of
with the oppressed against fascism.
Cambridge's young Communists, sage. his
this
was an
irresistibly
According to one of those who knew him, Burgess
own
"light blue ring of five."
Hitler over Europe?
set
heady mesout to form
76
was reviewed
in the
New
Statesman
in
April 1934 by Brian Howard, one of Burgess's closest friends and, like
Though Evelyn Waugh, quoting Lady Caroline Lamb on Byron, called Howard "mad, bad and dangerous to know," he was rapidly becoming an influential him, a predatory Old Etonian Marxist homosexual.
Howard eulogized Hitler over Europe? as "probably the book on the Third Reich that has appeared in English": "Ernst Henri's book should be read at once by everyone who is seriously
literary figure.
best
interested in understanding the real bases of Hitlerism. ... It discloses, for the first time, the
on
dynamics of the Nazi movement." Howard went
to endorse Henri's analysis of "the celebrated Revolutionary
Groups
of Five," and ended with a rallying cry to English anti-fascists to "band
themselves together" without delay. 77 Henri's career in Soviet intelligence spanned half a century,
beginning as an
OGPU illegal between the wars and ending in the Fifth
Directorate of Andropov's 1933, Henri later
was instructed
during the
KGB. Having helped 78
to
to recruit Burgess in
keep a watchful eye on him a generation
final alcoholic
years of Burgess's
his death in 1963. Unsurprisingly,
Moscow
exile before
Henri has always refused to discuss
publicly the details of his intelligence career. But in 1988 he at last
admitted to a Western writer that he had talent-spotted for the
Cambridge Dobb. 79
at
in the
KGB
1930s and had kept in touch with both Burgess and
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
196
When
Burgess met him for the
thirty, short, slim,
first
time, Henri
was not yet
with a heavy mustache but already going bald. Like
Munzenberg and Katz, he was an engaging, cosmopolitan quite unlike the doctrinaire, ily
taking over
Henri a decade
much later
of the
narrow-minded
NKVD.
when he was
Stalinists
Edith Cobbett,
extrovert
who were steadwho worked for
the editor of the Soviet
News
in
London, found him "really a charismatic personality," who was always fun to be with: "I think I laughed during the period I worked with him as much as I've laughed at any time in my life." Henri preferred Picasso
and Matisse
to the officially favored artists of Socialist realism, dressed
and enjoyed Westerns. He was also capable of an irreverence which, though it must have attracted Burgess, would have been unthinkable in the Soviet Union. After reading a typically tedious series of Stalinist speeches, Henri once said to Edith Cobbett: in
well-made English
"Wouldn't
it
be fun
suits,
if
somebody
said 'Sod Stalin!' for a change?"
But Henri was also an idealistic Communist and a Russian patriot with a tremendous pride in Soviet achievements and the eco-
nomic transformation wrought by the Five Year Plans. 80 Throughout his long career in journalism and Soviet intelligence Henri preached the need to "stop underestimating the revolutionary moods and powers of the youth": "For nearly two centuries bourgeois society has really feared only the working class. It now finds it has to fear another force young people who until recently were ordered to listen and do as they are told." Writing in 1982, Henri criticized "both Right and Left extremists" for playing on the emotions of "susceptible" students. 81 Half a century earlier he played with some success himself on the same emotions. He admitted in 1988 that he was "astonished" that his talent spotting in Cambridge for the KGB had not led to his arrest in the
—
1930s.
82
Though
four of the Magnificent Five and several less celebrated moles
were recruited while
still at Cambridge, the first and most famous of them entered the KGB by a slightly different route. Harold Adrian Russell ("Kim") Philby was born in India on New Year's Day 1912, the son of Harry St. John and Dora Philby. His father, then a civil servant of the British Raj, went on to become a celebrated Arabist. Like his son, who adored him, St. John Philby moved easily in two quite different worlds. He wrote for The Times, stood twice for Parliament, was a habitue of London clubland, and tried never to miss a test match. But he was equally at home dressed as an Arab, converted to Islam, and
Sigint,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
took a Saudi slave
girl as his
197
second wife. 83 Like Kim, though on a far
John betrayed British secrets to a foreign power for which he felt a stronger loyalty. Having conceived an intense admiration for Ibn Saud, he passed to him classified documents on the
more modest
scale, St.
Middle East. 84
Kim
went both to
his father's old school, Westminster,
he was a King's Scholar, then
in
where
October 1929 to his father's Cambridge
which was also the college of Anthony Blunt and (from 1930) of Guy Burgess. One of Philby's first acts on going up to Trinity was to join the Cambridge University Socialist Society (CUSS), though
college, Trinity,
two years his involvement in it was limited to attending meetings. During those two years he read history, did little work, and gained only third-class honors in the examination for Part I of the Cambridge
for
Historical Tripos.
In October 1931 he changed to economics for the second part
of his degree course. His change coincided with a landslide election victory by
Ramsay MacDonald's National Government, which reto a rump of only fifty-two seats. "It was
duced the Labour opposition the
Labour
disaster of 1931," said Philby later,
"which
first set
me
Labour Party." He took a more active part in the now Communist-dominated CUSS, becoming its treasurer during his last year at Cambridge in 1932-33. But it was not until his last term at Trinity, in the early summer of 1933, that Philby threw off what he called his "last doubts." Two experiences were probably decisive in Kim's final conversion. The first was a visit seriously to thinking about possible alternatives to the
to Berlin in
March 1933 during his last Easter vacation, shortly after when he witnessed at firsthand Hitler's
the burning of the Reichstag,
persecution of the
KPD
and the setting-up of the Nazi police
Philby returned to Cambridge for his
final
state.
term burning to play his part
in the fight against fascism.
In Cambridge the most importance influence on him was MauDobb, one of the dons who set him economics essays and discussed each with him individually for an hour at a time, probably prolonging the discussion when the hour was up to talk about politics. To his disciples Dobb emphasized the role of the Comintern in the struggle against fascism. Another Trinity undergraduate who fell under Dobb's spell, V. G. Kiernan, wrote later: "We belonged to the era of the Third International, genuinely international at least in spirit, when the Cause stood high above any national or parochial claims." Philby graduated in June 1933 with upper second-class honors rice
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
198
economics and "the conviction that Communism." He later revealed that on
in
my
life
his last
must be devoted to day in Cambridge he
went to seek Dobb's advice on how best to work for the cause: "He gave me an introduction to a communist group in Paris, a perfectly legal and open group." The group, though Philby declined to identify it, was almost certainly Munzenberg's World Committee for the Relief of Victims of German Fascism.
It is
quite possible that in directing Philby
Munzenberg Dobb did not realize that he had begun Kim's recruitment as a Soviet agent. He was sufficiently naive to have thought simply in terms of enlisting Philby in the Comintern's secret war against to
international fascism.
After making contact with Munzenberg's apparat in Paris,
Philby was "passed ... on to a communist underground organization in
Vienna." 85 His contact address was the house of Israel and Gisella
Kohlmann, Polish Jews who had arrived in Vienna shortly before the World War. Israel was a minor civil servant who, together with
First
his wife, spent
became
most of
his spare time in
their paying guest,
learning
German and working
manns' daughter,
Litzi
Jewish welfare work. Philby
nominally spending his time in Vienna as a freelance journalist.
The Kohl-
Friedmann, a short, vivacious divorcee, was
already working as a Comintern agent. In the course of the winter,
while out for a walk together in the snow, she and Philby became lovers. "I
know
it
sounds impossible," Philby told a
actually quite
warm once you
got used to
later mistress,
it."
"but
it
was
In February 1934 Litzi
became Philby's first wife. By that time she had already introduced him to the Comintern underground. 86 As Philby acknowledged half a century later in an interview a few months before his death, his work in Vienna "caught the attention" of the
OGPU. The
87
to realize Philby's potential as a Soviet agent was the Teodor Maly, whose portrait is among the score of KGB heroes that hang today on the walls of the First Chief Directorate first
great illegal,
Memory Room. The
official
eulogy beneath Maly's portrait cites as his
greatest achievement his role in recruiting
and running Philby and the
Magnificent Five. 88 Slutsky, then head of INO, ascribed Maly's success to his percharm and instinctive tact. He was a large, handsome man nicknamed "der Lange," the tall fellow, within the Comintern underground of Central Europe. The NKVD defector Aleksandr Orlov, no admirer of most of his former colleagues, remembered affectionately Maly's
sonal
Sigint,
"strong,
manly
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
face
his strong exterior
and
large,
199
almost childlike, blue eyes." 89 Beneath
and passionate devotion
to
Comintern
ideals,
some
of his agents sensed an inner vulnerability, which only strengthened their
attachment to him. 90 Maly had
ingly brutal apparatchiks
Great Terror.
little in
common
with the increas-
who came to dominate the NKVD during the
He was Hungarian by
birth
and had been ordained as a
as a chaplain in the
World War. During the war he served Austro-Hungarian army before being taken pris-
oner by the Russians
in the
Catholic priest before the First
Carpathians.
He later told one of his agents:
young men with frozen limbs dying in was moved from one [POW] camp to another and starved along with the other prisoners. We were all covered with vermin and many were dying from typhus. I lost my faith in God and when the revolution broke out I joined the Bolsheviks. I broke with my past completely. I was no longer a Hungarian, a priest, a Christian, even anyone's son. I was just a soldier "missing in action." I became a Communist and have always remained one. I
saw
all
the horrors,
the trenches.
Soon
after
he
left
I
POW
camp, Maly's burning desire
to defend the
Revolution from counterrevolution earned him admission to the
Cheka. The visionary
faith in
an earthly new Jerusalem free from
man by man that replaced his religious faith during the First World War never left him. But it was shaken by the horrors of both the Civil War and collectivization. During the Civil War, he the exploitation of
said later:
Our Red detachments would "clean up" villages exactly the way the Whites did. What was left of the inhabitants, old men, women, children were machine-gunned for having given assistance to the enemy.
of the women.
When
I
I
could not stand the wailing
simply could not.
were being "cleaned up," Maly claimed that he would hands over his ears. Once counterrevolution had been defeated, he seems to have persuaded himself that the horrors of the Civil War were past. With collectivization they returned. "I knew what we were doing to the peasants," Maly admitted, "how many were villages
try to hide with his
deported,
how many were
shot.
And
still I
stayed on.
I still
hoped the
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
200
chance would come for
me
to atone for
personally involved in the case of a
what
I
had done." He became
man who had
been sentenced to
death for stealing a small bag of potatoes to feed his starving children.
Maly persuaded
his chief to
to imprisonment. life
recommend
that the sentence be
commuted
He saw the man's wife and told her that her husband's
had been saved. "This case," he
believed,
my
"had become
atone-
ment":
Then
I
had
to
got back the
go away on a two-week assignment.
When
I
"my
case."
I
first
could not find the
thing file.
I I
did was to look for
ran to
my
chief.
He
did not
know
what had happened and both of us started to hunt for the file. We finally found it. Scribbled across it was one word: "Executed."
Next day Maly went
to
INO
and asked
for a foreign posting.
assignment, probably late in 1932, was as an
A
His
first
OGPU illegal in Germany.
few months after the Nazi conquest of power, he moved to Vienna.
His message to his Austrian agent Hede Massing
Kim in
91
Philby also
—was rather
different
—
and no doubt to from that spread by Ernst Henri
England. Instead of stressing, like Henri, the success of the under-
ground war waged by the German workers' Fiinfergruppen, Maly argued that the struggle against Nazism had to be waged chiefly from
beyond the German
We
outside. side."
92
"The only way
to fight fascism
now we must do
it
is
from the
from the out-
In the underground struggle against international fascism
rekindled his his
frontier:
did not succeed inside,
own
Maly
own early Bolshevik idealism, and inspired his agents with Communist International. work for the Comintern in between outlawed Austrian Communists and
vision of the final victory of the
Philby's
first
experience of
illegal
Vienna was as a courier contacts in Hungary, Paris, and Prague. In February 1934 the struggle between left and right in Austria reached what Philby fairly described
The forces of the right-wing Dollfuss government and more extreme street fighters of the Heimwehr (whose founder, Prince Starhemberg, had taken part in Hitler's attempted Munich
as "crisis point."
the even
putsch of 1923) attacked trade-union headquarters, left-wing newspapers, Socialist offices, welfare offices,
even housing complexes.
Two
of
the largest Viennese housing complexes were demolished by artillery
and nine Socialist leaders were strung up in the courtyard of the Supreme Court. If there was one episode that more than any other fire
Sigint,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
NKVD agent,
it was probaand Socialists smuggling Communists
persuaded Maly of Philby's potential as an bly his courage and ingenuity in
out of the country. The Daily Telegraph correspondent Eric later recalled being visited
I
opened
my
by Philby
wardrobe
201
Gedye
in Vienna:
to select something.
When Kim saw
"Good God, you have seven; I six wounded friends in the sewers The suits were stuffed in a suitcase
several suits there, he cried,
must have them. in
I've got
danger of the gallows."
and, according to Philby, used to smuggle his friends out of this hiding place in the
sewers and across the border into
Czechoslovakia. 93 Philby later admitted to his children that during his time in Vienna he was "given the job of penetrating British intelligence, and told it did not matter how long it took to do the job." 94 It was Maly who gave him that assignment and in May 1934 sent him back to England to pursue it. To act as Philby's controller Maly sent to London an illegal who had worked for him in Vienna, Arnold Deutsch. Deutsch's portrait hangs
today next to Maly's ate.
The
in the
Memory Room
of the First Chief Director-
citation beneath ranks his contribution to the recruitment
and
running of the Cambridge moles as virtually the equal of Maly's. 95
Deutsch was a thirty-year-old Austrian Jew, an
attractive, tal-
European in the Maly and Munzenberg mold. Born the son of a Jewish trader and brought up in an orthodox Jewish quarter of Vienna, he left his secondary school, a Vienna Realgymnasium, in June 1923, a month after his nineteenth birthday. The following autumn he entered the Philosophy Faculty at Vienna University. Despite the Faculty's name, many of its students, like Deutsch, were scientists. Though Deutsch took no first degree equivalent to the B.A. or B.S., his progress was more rapid than the regulations at any British or American university would allow. For four years he concentrated most of his studies in physics and chemistry, also taking courses in philosophy and psychology. He spent his fifth year writing up a Ph.D. thesis entitled "On Silver and Mercury Salts of Amidobenzothiazols and a New Method of Quantitative Silver Analysis." ented, cosmopolitan Central
On
July 19, 1928, less than five years after entering Vienna
University and two months after his twenty-fourth birthday, Deutsch
was awarded the degree of doctor of philosophy with distinction. His however, proved controversial. At the first oral examina-
dissertation,
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
202
tion,
when he defended
nounced
it
his thesis,
one of the three examiners pro-
"unsatisfactory"; Deutsch passed by a majority vote.
second oral examination, which covered a broader
field
At the
of knowledge
and determined Deutsch's final grade, the two examiners also disagreed. Professor Schlick awarded him a distinction, Professor Reiniger a pass. tion.
On
the chairman's casting a vote, Deutsch received a distinc-
96
The examiner chiefly ritz Schlick,
responsible for Deutsch's distinction,
founder of the Vienna Circle of philosophers and
Mo-
scientists,
was distinguished as both a physicist and a philosopher. He was assassinated in 1936 by an aggrieved student, whose thesis on ethics he had failed. A decade earlier he was probably an important influence on Deutsch, who took his course on ethics in the summer semester of 1926. Schlick equated moral values with feelings of pleasure, and human fulfillment with ecstasy. But to achieve ecstasy in contemporary society he argued that the individual must first endure torment; joy and sorrow together produced a convulsion through which "the whole person is affected to a depth which few impressions can reach." Schlick believed that as civilization progressed it would gradually make it possible for
human
beings to achieve pleasure without suffering. 97
Throughout
his time at
Vienna University, Deutsch described
himself in university documents and his curriculum vitae as Jewish
both by religion (mosaisch) and by ethnic origin lectual progression
(jiidisch).
98
His
intel-
from orthodox Judaism to Marxist materialism
cannot be traced with certainty. But Deutsch's attraction to Schlick's vision of a world in
which joy would replace suffering seems to have in the end overtaken, by his growing commit-
been accompanied, and
ment to the Communist International's vision of a new world order that would free mankind from exploitation and alienation. In the late 1920s he joined the "sex-pol" movement founded by the Viennese Jewish psychologist, Wilhelm Reich, which opened clinics to counsel workers on sexual problems. Deutsch ran the Munster-Verlag which published Reich's work and other "sex-pol" literature. 99 At this stage of his career, Reich was engaged in an ambitious attempt to integrate Freudianism with Marxism. Political and sexual repression, he argued, went together and paved the way for fascism. For a time he hoped that the Soviet Union might be capable of ending both. In 1930 Reich left Vienna for Berlin, where he joined the German Communist Party (KPD). After Hitler's rise to power three years later, he was forced to flee from Germany, returned briefly to Vienna, then left for Scandinavia where
Sigint,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
203
human
sexual be-
he began a sometimes bizarre research program on
havior which earned him a reputation as "the prophet of the better
orgasm." Deutsch's involvement in the "sex-pol" movement and his role in publishing
some of Reich's work
in
Vienna brought him to the
attention of the anti-pornography section of the Austrian police,
which
began an investigation of
his activities in the spring of 1934, just as
was leaving
100
The
for England.
Chief Di-
citation beneath Deutsch's portrait in the First
Memory Room makes no mention
rectorate
Reich. Instead the Comintern
he
of his association with
records that he entered the OGPU after working for OMS and that his first foreign mission was to Palestine, it
then under a British mandate. In 1933 Deutsch and his wife, Josefine (nee Rubel),
had married
OGPU
in 1929, visited
and
illegal
Moscow. There Deutsch was
he
trained as an
While
his wife as a radio operator.
whom
in
Arnold Deutsch was given the cover name Stefan Lang, but
Moscow in April
1934 he traveled to London under his real name, using his Austrian passport so that he could use his academic credentials to mix in university circles.
101
During
his years in
London, he posed as a "university
He lived at first at temporary addresses, him in 1935 moved to a flat on Lawn Road,
lecturer" carrying out research.
but
when
his wife joined
Hampstead. In
May
1936 Josefine Deutsch gave birth to a daughter,
Ninette Elizabeth. 102
Kim home
in
May
Philby returned to England in
Deutsch's arrival, living at
Hampstead. His
first
first
with his
new
1934, a
month
after
bride Litzi in his mother's
attempt to penetrate Whitehall was an
application to join the civil service. But his
two
—
his
former
Trinity director of studies in economics, Dennis Robertson,
and a
family friend, Donald Robertson (no relation) ing consulted with his fellow referee about
referees
—had
their doubts.
Hav-
Kim's Communist sympa-
him that while they admired his energy and intelligence, they would feel bound to add that his "sense of political injustice might well unfit him for administrative work." Philby withdrew his application and settled instead for a long
thies at
Cambridge, Dennis Robertson wrote to
haul into the establishment.
He
tell
took a job with the City-based
liberal
monthly, Review of Reviews, broke contact with his Cambridge Communist friends, and let it be known that his politics had changed.
Arnold Deutsch,
whom
he knew only as Otto, was sympathetic, en-
couraging, and counseled patience:
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
204
He told me he appreciated my commitment; the question was how best to use me. I should not go off and die on some become a war correspondent for the Daily Worker. There were more important battles for me to fight but I would have to be patient. For the next two years he gave me virtually nothing to do. He was testing my commitment. I would turn up for our meetings with nothing to 103 offer and would receive in return patient encouragement. foreign battlefield or
Deutsch arrived
in
England with instructions
to
make
contact with
Burgess as well as with Philby. 104 Already enthusiastic about the secret
war against fascism waged by the groups of five, Burgess had been suggested for recruitment by both Philby and Henri. A more doctrinaire and less imaginative NKVD control than Deutsch might well have concluded that the outrageous Burgess would be a liability rather than an
Deutsch, however, shared Burgess's contempt for bour-
asset.
from involvement
geois sexual morality. His belief, derived
in
Wilhelm
Reich's "sex-pol" movement, that political and sexual repression went together,
most of
commended him
to all the Magnificent Five
childhood seems to have been both privileged and
He was
—but probably
to Burgess. Despite Burgess's later embellishments, his
all
the son of a naval
commander who
After a year at Eton,
Guy had
fairly conventional.
had married a rich wife.
been sent to the Royal Naval
College at Dartmouth, where he shone both in the classroom and on the playing
field.
Poor eyesight, however,
disqualified
him from pursu-
ing a naval career, and at the age of sixteen he returned to Eton. In his final
year he
won
the Rosebery and Gladstone history prizes as well as
a scholarship in history to Trinity College, Cambridge. But despite an increasingly flamboyant gregariousness, he failed to
win election to
Pop, the exclusive Eton society, possibly because of his indiscreet homosexuality.
Once
remained of
his discretion to the winds.
at
Cambridge
in
October 1930 Burgess threw what
At a time when homosexual between consenting adults in private were still illegal, Burgess openly vaunted the pleasures of "rough trade" with young workingacts even
class males. 105
But Burgess did not confine himself to Cambridge's gay community. His brilliant conversation, good looks, natural gregariousness,
and self-assurance made him one of the most
socially successful under-
graduates of his generation, moving with equal confidence in the exclusive Pitt
Club and the more irreverent Footlights, the student society
Sigint,
devoted to tual gifts,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
satirical revue.
Burgess also possessed formidable
which displayed themselves, however,
fluent generalization
intellec-
in a talent for
in a capacity for
nor the bottle of
life
consumed each day with lunch impeded
apparently effortless progress to torical Tripos in
more
and well-chosen example than
close textual analysis. Neither his diverse social
1921 Liebfraumilch that he
205
first-class
honors
June 1932. Five months
later
his
in Part I of the His-
he was elected to the
Apostles, a secret intellectual discussion group of dons and undergraduates,
which prided
itself
bridge's ablest students.
When Goronwy met Burgess, then on a
(not entirely accurately) on recruiting
Cam-
106
Rees, then a young fellow of All Souls,
visit to
Oxford, in the
summer
first
of 1932, "he had
the reputation of being the most brilliant undergraduate of his day":
Indeed, he did not belie his reputation.
He was
then a scholar
was thought that he had a brilliant acaof him. That evening he talked a good deal about painting and to me it seemed that what he said was both original and sensitive, and, for one so young, to show an unusually wide knowledge of the subject. His conversation had the more charm because he was very good looking in a boyish, athletic, very English way; it seemed of Trinity, and
demic future
it
in front
incongruous that almost everything he said made
it
quite
was a homosexual and a communist. ... It seemed to me that there was something deeply original, something which was, as it were, his very own in everything he had to say. 107
clear that he
By
1932, as Rees discovered at their
Marxist.
By 1933
at the latest
first
meeting, Burgess was a
he had joined the Communist Party,
probably recruited by Maurice Dobb.
One
of his favorite historical
themes, in which he showed greater prescience than most of his lecturers,
was the
inevitable decline of the British Empire.
At the
society of
Indian nationalists in Cambridge, the Majlis, he argued that revolution in the
Empire would open the
British road to socialism. Burgess's sense
of living in the imperial twilight of British capitalism only seemed to
heighten his sense of the pleasures
it
had
to offer.
Yet he also took
increasingly to heart Marx's injunction that, whereas previous philoso-
phers had tried to interpret the world, "the point, however, it."
In his final year as an undergraduate, Burgess
is
to
became an
change
activist.
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
206
He helped to organize a successful strike among Trinity College waiters them
against the casual-labor system, which laid most of
off
during
vacations. Enjoying to the full the decadent pleasures of a capitalist
system to whose overthrow he was committed was characteristic of Burgess's youthful capacity to have his cake and eat Increasingly preoccupied by Party
boyant social
life,
Historical Tripos as easily as in Part in the
summer
work
Burgess did not cruise to a I.
During
108
it.
as well as his flam-
first in
Part II of the
his final examinations
of 1933 he suffered from (probably psychosomatic)
and was awarded an aegrotat, an unclassed honors degree awarded to those judged to be of degree standard but unable to com-
illness
plete their papers.
future ahead of
But he was
still
believed to have a brilliant academic
him and began work
for a
geois Revolution" in seventeenth-century
Ph.D. thesis on the "Bour-
England
in the
hope of win-
ning a fellowship at Trinity. 109
One of Burgess's most remarkable gifts even as an undergraduwas his ability to captivate dons as well as fellow students. Goronwy Rees, though a heterosexual who resisted Burgess's attempt to seduce him at their first meeting, immediately made great friends with him. From that moment on it was Burgess who dominated their relationship. Burgess's appeal to a number of homosexual dons was even greater. The distinguished Oxford classicist Maurice Bowra, then dean of Wadham College, with whom Burgess went to stay, was infatuated with him. Rees detected in Burgess "some conscious or unconscious will to dominate. ... He saw himself sometimes as a kind of Figaro figure ever resourceful in the service of others in order to manipulate them to his own ends." Within what Bowra called the "homintern" furtive, often frustrated homosexuals, sometimes guilt-ridden about their illegal sex lives Burgess's power to manipulate was at least partly sexual: ate
—
—
He was
gross and even brutal in his treatment of his lovers,
but his sexual behavior also had a generous aspect. ... At
one
time" or
friends, as
another he went to bed with most of these
he did with anyone
positively repulsive,
many
and
in
who was
willing
of their frustrations and inhibitions.
did not
last for long;
but
affection of those he
and was not
doing so he released them from
Guy had
.
.
.
Such
affairs
the faculty of retaining the
went to bed with, and
also, in
some
curious way, of maintaining a kind of permanent domination
over them. This was strengthened because, long after the
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
Sigint,
affair
sexual
was
207
over, he continued to assist his friends in their
which were often troubled and unsatisfactory, to
lives,
emotional
listen to their
tion of father confessor
and when necessary find To such people he was a combina-
difficulties
suitable partners for them.
and pimp. 110
The member of the "homintern" on whom Burgess had the most enduring influence was Anthony Blunt, from whom he derived some of the insights into painting that so impressed Goronwy Rees at their first meeting. Anthony Blunt, the most senior of Cambridge's Magnificent Five,
was the son of a well-connected Anglican clergyman, the Rever-
end Arthur Vaughan Stanley Blunt, who died at
in
Anthony's third year
Cambridge. Queen Mary, consort of King George V, wrote to his
widow, Hilda: "What a
loss
he
will be.
who was doing such good work on are allowed to live?" saintly father but
when such useless, evil people Anthony had only a distant relationship with his
was deeply attached
brother Wilfrid as a
Why should he have been taken,
earth,
to his mother, described
When
his
"woman of infinite goodness and almost puritanical
simplicity, incapable of telling the whitest of white lies."
British
by
111
Blunt was four, his father had become chaplain at the
embassy
in Paris.
The next
ten years,
which the family spent
almost entirely in France, gave Blunt what he described as "a very
my whole attitude to things was brought up from a very early age, really almost unconsciously, to look at works of art and to regard them as of importance." 112 At school at Marlborough from the age of fourteen, Blunt strong French leaning which has coloured ever since.
I
acquired, according to his close friend and contemporary the poet Louis
MacNeice, a reputation for "precocious knowledge of art and habitual contempt for conservative authority." Blunt himself told a
later genera-
tion of Marlburians:
We
went out of our way to be
used to walk handkerchiefs
down
—
I
irritatingly provocative.
used to wear mine from the strap of
wrist-watch and they could not stop
no
rule preventing
it.
We
the aisle of chapel flaunting our silk
And on
me
my
because there was
Saturday evenings we used to
go upfield to where other boys were playing rounders and infuriate
them by playing catch with a
loured ball right across their game.
large, brightly co-
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
208
At Marlborough itself
on an
Neice,
"He
Blunt's disdain for bourgeois convention expressed
told everyone
who would
very low to talk about politics." boys, Blunt
he
left
According to Mac-
aesthetic rather than a political plane.
may
school;
113
he
listen that
.
.
.
considered
it
Despite a number of crushes on other
not yet have been a practicing homosexual by the time
some of
his closest schoolfriends, like
MacNeice, were
heterosexual.
The course
that
bridge, the History of 1960s.
When
would have most
interested Blunt at
Art Tripos, was not introduced
he arrived
at
Cambridge
in 1926,
Cam-
until the early
no English university which Blunt later
yet taught art history; the Courtauld Institute, of
became
director,
was not founded
until 1931.
College with a scholarship in mathematics
ment
man whose main
for a
however, did not
suit
Mathematical Tripos
changed
to
gifts
and
were aesthetic and
end of
at the
culture.
Tripos in 1928, gaining
his first year in
first-class
Part
honors
I
in
Math, of the
June 1927, he
first-class
Modern Languages
of the
which he had German. For the concentrate on French.
French
remainder of his degree course he was able to graduated in 1930 with
I
a subject less remote from his interests
He took
been fluent since childhood) and an upper second
He
114
literary.
him. After second-class honors in Part
modern languages,
in continental art
Blunt entered Trinity
—a considerable achieve-
(in
in
honors in Part
II
of the
Modern
Languages Tripos. 115 In
May
1928 Blunt was elected to the Apostles.
his fellow Apostle, the King's
It
was probably
mathematician Alister Watson
senior scientific officer in the Admiralty and also a
not quite in the same class as the Magnificent Five),
Blunt to the serious study of Marxist theory. 116 But
(later
KGB agent, though who it
first
attracted
was several years
Marxism was translated into political activThe impression formed of the undergraduate Blunt by the young Trinity history don Steven Runciman was shared by many who met
before Blunt's intellectual ism.
him. "He was always, I think, rather pleased with himself. But he could be very good company." During his four years as an undergraduate Blunt also became an active, though discreet, homosexual. 117
The most important the
influence in drawing Blunt into
work
for
KGB was Guy Burgess, who came up to Trinity as an undergradu-
ate just as Blunt began postgraduate research in
Blunt
who two
October 1930.
It
was
years later introduced Burgess into the Apostles. 118
By
then Blunt had been elected to a research fellowship at Trinity for his
work on "The
history of theories of painting with special reference to
Sigint,
Poussin." in
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
The new
research fellow and the
209
new Apostle were frequently
each other's company. Both were sufficiently well-known figures to
be recognized together by an unruly Corpus Christi undergraduate, Valentine Lawford,
as he stood in a
banana
at the
window overlooking
which of three possible the broad one who looked like a rowing
Great Gate, not caring
human
targets
it
Part of the
hit:
one
blue, the short
long, thin
Trinity and threw a
people emerging after luncheon through the in the least
whom
I
knew
as
Guy
bond between the two was
sexual. Blunt felt a passionate
physical attraction for the younger man. Burgess, all his liaisons,
Bowra and
casual in
to the proletarian pleasures of
"rough trade." But,
others in the homintern, Blunt was also enormously
attracted by Burgess's intellectual
breadth of vision. At their
by Burgess's
much more
probably released Blunt's remaining sexual inhibitions
and introduced him like
Burgess, or the
one who was Anthony Blunt. 119
first
flair,
conversational brilliance, and
meeting Goronwy Rees was enthralled
ability to relate his interests in the arts to the
interpretation of history
and that
Marxist
busmen's strike he was
in turn to a
helping to organize in Cambridge. 120 In 1972, seven years before his treachery was exposed, Blunt protested publicly against those
sought to
belittle the
remarkable
gifts
displayed in Burgess's Cambridge
years:
It is, I
think, important to repeat that he
was not only one
of the most intellectually stimulating people
I
have ever
known but
also had great charm and tremendous vivacity; and those people who now write saying that they felt physically sick in his presence are not speaking the truth.
They
are
may have been country. He was a
throwing back to his early years things that true about
Guy
in his later years in this
terrific intellectual
interests
stimulus.
He had
a far wider range of
than either [John] Cornford or [James]
Klugmann
two most prominent student Party activists in Cambridge]. He was interested in everything and although he was perverse in many ways there was no subject which one could discuss with him without his expressing some interesting and [the
worthwhile view. 121
own who
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
210
Burgess's most important influence on Blunt was to persuade his
to
him of
duty to translate his theoretical Marxism into an active commitment
work
Comintern
for the
—and ultimately the KGB—
tional struggle against fascism.
The
in the interna-
core of Burgess's argument was
probably accurately summarized in one of his favorite passages from a
memoir by Claud Cockburn:
A moment comes when your actions have to bear some kind of relation to your words. That
is
what
is
called the
Moment
of Truth. 122
That moment came early fired
by Henri's vision of
of the
German
in the
academic year 1933-34, when Burgess,
solidarity with the anti-Nazi Fiinfergruppen
workers, set out to form a Cambridge group of
five.
Blunt himself made a veiled reference to this turning point in his career in
an
published in 1973:
article
Quite suddenly, in the autumn term of 1933, Marxism hit
Cambridge.
I
can date
ical leave for that
[1934],
I
it
quite precisely because
term, and
when
found that almost
literally
I
came back
had sabbatin
January
my
younger friends had
Party;
and Cambridge was
all
become Marxist and joined the
I
transformed overnight. 123
how the "transformation" affected Moment of Truth" had come and that
Blunt could not then reveal publicly him. Burgess insisted that "the
Blunt had fascism.
now to commit himself to the Comintern's secret war against
At
the end of the Michaelmas (autumn) term 1933, Burgess
visited Blunt in
Rome, where he was spending
part of his sabbatical
staying with Ellis Waterhouse, then librarian at the British School in
Rome. Waterhouse was not privy to all that passed between Burgess and Blunt. He noted, however, that until Burgess's arrival "We never talked politics at
all.
But that was
all
did." It
was probably
in
to discuss. He was Anthony followed what he
Guy wanted
exceedingly intelligent about politics and
Rome, the capital of Fascist
Italy, that
Burgess
recruited Blunt to his secret ring of five to pursue the Comintern's secret
war against
international fascism. 124
Apart from Blunt, the most important early recruit to Burgess's ring of five was probably the Trinity Hall undergraduate Donald Maclean,
Sigint,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
whom eighteen
211
Moscow. Maclean's father, Sir Donald Maclean, was a Presbyterian lawyer and Liberal politician of English birth but Scottish ancestry. At the time of his sudden death in 1932 he was president of the Board of Education in Ramsay MacDonald's National Government. Sir Donald's concern with high moral standards led him to send his son to Gresham's School, at Holt in Norfolk, whose headmaster, J. E. Eccles, emphasized to each new boy the importance "of truth, and frankness, and honour; of purity with
years later he
was
to defect to
and word, and deed; of the value and importance of hard work and honest work." To encourage purity and limit adolescent in thought,
sexual experimentation in daytime, each boy's trouser pockets were
sewn up. One of Gresham's most famous pupils in the Eccles era, the poet W. H. Auden, claimed in 1934: "The best reason I have for opposing fascism is that at school I have lived in a fascist state."
Maclean reacted
less strongly.
dence that he hated (even or his public school.
He
if
There
no convincing
is
evi-
he did not greatly love) either his father
played for Gresham's
at
rugby,
won an
exhi-
bition (slightly less prestigious than a scholarship) to Trinity Hall,
Cambridge, and
school with no taint on his moral reputation.
left
Unlike Philby and Burgess, however, he had his with
Communism
at
("James") Klugmann, cal
school.
His
who went on
to
school
first
friend
serious contact
Norman John
become a member of the
committee of the Communist Party of Great
the Party historian, later claimed that he
politi-
Britain, as well as
became a Communist
at
annoy the school authorities. Maclean had his first experience of leading a double life while still at school, concealing from his father both his loss of Christian faith and his increasingly left-wing political opinions. If he was not already a Communist by the time he arrived at Trinity Hall in 1931, he became one during his first year. It was probably his friend Kluggers, a modernGresham's
to
languages scholar at the neighboring Trinity College,
duced him to Burgess.
And
it
who
first
intro-
was probably the predatory Burgess who
became the bisexual Maclean's first lover. Having liberated Maclean from his sexual inhibitions, Burgess moved on rapidly to other conquests. He later ridiculed the idea that Maclean's "large, flabby, white whale-like body" could have appealed to him. In reality Maclean's tall, dark, athletic good looks made him, like Burgess, attractive to both sexes. 125 Burgess also released some of Maclean's political inhibitions. It was probably in the autumn term, 1933, shortly before he traveled to
Rome
to see Blunt, that Burgess
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
212
him
recruited
Comintern's secret war
to his secret cell, to join the
against international fascism.
November 1933 Maclean gave an
main Cambridge student magazine, The Granta, which contained a curious allusion to his double life on both the sexual and political planes. Maclean began the interview by stating that he had three different personalities. He then adopted each of them in turn: first the camp, homosexual aesthete Cecil, "Just slipping into my velvet trousers when I heard you call. You must come to my next party. I am going to have real Passion flowers and everybody is going to dress up as a Poem In
.
.
interview to the
.
of Today"; then the heterosexual sporting hearty Jack, "Just having a steak at the Pig and Whistle
good fellows there finally,
—and damn
I
heard you shout. Some awfully
fine waitresses too (he
winks)"; and,
the innermost Maclean, the deadly serious Marxist grind Fred,
"Very busy just now trying is
when
to find out
material or merely dialectic.
to work. That's
what I'm here
Like some of the
German
.
.
.
whether Middleton Murray
The
for."
point
is this.
[sic]
Everybody ought
126
Fiinfergruppen on which
it
was modeled,
Burgess's Ring of Five had a fluctuating membership that did not five. Its earliest members probably also included Watson and James Klugmann. Neither, however, was later regarded by the KGB as in the same class as Philby, Burgess, Blunt, Maclean or the Fifth Man recruited in 1935.
always total exactly Alister
—
In the spring of 1934 Burgess changed his research subject from the seventeenth-century "Bourgeois Revolution" to the "Indian
Mu-
127
That project too ran out of steam as Burgess became preoccupied with the secret war against fascism. In May, soon after Philby returned to London, he visited Cambridge and gave Burgess a firsthand
tiny."
account of his adventures with the Comintern underground in Vienna. 128 Goronwy Rees found Burgess's admiration for Philby "so I found it difficult to understand on what objective was based." 129 It was probably also in May, and in an East that Burgess had his first meeting with Arnold Deutsch,
excessive that
grounds
it
End cafe, whom, like
Philby, he
knew simply
as Otto.
Philby of his recruitment. Philby, by his gratulating him." 131 In the
130
own
Burgess wrote to
tell
account, "replied con-
summer of 1934, with the encouragement of Germany and Russia accompanied by the Oxford Communist Derek Blaikie (later killed in the Second World War). Their visit to Germany took place at a dramatic time. Shortly Deutsch, Burgess visited both
Sigint,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
213
had discussed with a young German Communist how he might escape to Russia, they heard the sound of distant gunfire. It was June 30, 1934, the "Night of the Long Knives," when Hitler settled 132 accounts with his opponents in the Nazi Party. During his visit to Moscow, according to one of his confidants, Burgess met both Pyatnitsky, the head of OMS, and Bukharin, the former Comintern leader. 133 The trip encouraged him in his conviction that he was working for the Comintern in a secret war against international fascism. But on his return Deutsch was able to persuade him that to pursue the secret war he, like Philby, must go underground and after they
break
all visible ties
manner
his friends
with the Communist Party. Burgess did so in a
found bizarre, comparing Stalin unfavorably with
the fascist dictators, and pointing to fascism as "the
Even
at the secret
wave of the future."
meetings of the Apostles he hid his political convic-
tions:
In any discussion of ideas he was always ready with an apt quotation, an amusing anecdote, a suggestive analogy, a
mocking cal,
riposte. If the question before the society
he spoke
in
was
politi-
metaphors that were distant and obscure.
he was challenged to state his
own
He would
blue eyes would widen.
If
convictions, his bright
look at the challenger with
a beguiling smile, and then speak of other things. 134
As he coaxed Burgess an nal
into accepting at least
some of the
discipline of
NKVD agent, Deutsch also persuaded him to water down his origiaim of a Comintern
cell,
pen, working as a group.
by Deutsch and craft,
later
conceived in imitation of the Funfergrup-
The Cambridge
by Maly. 135 But,
recruits
were run individually
in defiance of
orthodox trade-
Burgess continued to look on intelligence as a semisocial activity
carried
on
in collaboration
edged, "It was Burgess
of us." 136
It
was that
with his friends.
who
As
Philby later acknowl-
on maintaining the links with all which in 1951 almost led to Philby's
insisted
insistence
downfall. 137
At Deutsch's prompting, Donald Maclean cut his links with the Communist Party at the same time as Burgess. After graduating with first-class honors in modern languages in June 1934, he had intended either to go to teach English in the Soviet Union or to stay on in Cambridge to work for his Ph.D.; the subject he had in mind for his dissertation
was a Marxist
analysis of
John Calvin and the
rise
of the
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
214
bourgeoisie. Instead he
summer
announced
to his
mother
in the course of the
that he intended to try for the Foreign Office.
Lady Maclean
was pleased but asked whether Donald's intentions might not with his Communist
"You must
beliefs.
cock," replied her son, "but the fact lately."
He
think
I
turn like a weather-
I've rather
is
gone
for the Foreign Office
passed with flying colors. Maclean later described interview he was asked about his
I'm afraid
did an instant double-take: Shall
I
truth, or shall
"Yes,"
I said,
shaken them
I
brazen
it
out?
I
I
at
—and
I
1935. 138
He
at his final
Cambridge:
deny the
decided to brazen
"I did have such views off." I
the British
how
"Communist views"
that
off" all
crammer near exams in August
spent most of the next year at a
Museum, preparing
conflict
it
out.
haven't entirely
think they must have liked
my
honesty
because they nodded, looked at each other and smiled. Then the chairman said:
"Thank you,
that will be
all,
Mr. Ma-
clean." 139
When Maclean mounted the steps of the Foreign Office in October
1935
as a
new member
first
of the Magnificent Five to penetrate the corridors of power. It
secrets.
of His Majesty's Diplomatic Service, he became the
took Burgess longer than Maclean to gain access to
By
official
the end of 1934 his research had ground to a halt and he
decided to leave Trinity. His
job outside Cambridge, early in 1935, mother of his Trinity friend and fellow Apostle, Victor (later Lord) Rothschild. But his long-term aim, agreed on with Deutsch at their regular meetings in East End cafes, was to penetrate the corridors of power if possible the Secret Intelligence 140 Service. To that end, Burgess set out to exploit "cynically and consciously ... the old boy network," deploying in the process all his considerable charm save that, as he later admitted, he "could never
was
first
as financial adviser to the
—
bother to keep his finger-nails clean." 141
He
appears to have
made an
unsuccessful attempt to get a job in the Conservative Party Research
Department, directed by
Sir
Joseph
Ball,
former head of MI5's Investi-
gation Branch and a close adviser to the future prime minister Neville
Chamberlain. 142
By
the end of 1935, however, Burgess had
become personal young homosexual Conservative M.P. Captain "Jack" Macnamara, whom Rees considered "so far to the right that it was reasonable to call him a fascist." "Guy talked about his employer with assistant to the
.
.
.
Sigint,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
215
a kind of genial contempt; he was once again playing his Figaro role
who
and his employer went on a number of fact-finding missions to Nazi Germany, which, according to Burgess, consisted largely of homosexual escapades with sympa143 Burgess built up a remarkable thetic members of the Hitler Youth. range of contacts among the continental homintern. Chief among them was Edouard Pfeiffer, chefde cabinet to Edouard Daladier, French war minister from January 1936 to May 1940 and prime minister from of the servant
April 1938 to
is
March
really the master." Figaro
1940. Burgess told friends lurid stories of how
"He
had spent an and two members of the French cabinet evening together at a male brothel in Paris. Singing and laughing, they had danced around a table, lashing a naked boy, who was strapped to and
Pfeiffer
.
.
.
with leather whips." 144
it,
Unlike Philby, Burgess, and Maclean, Blunt did not need to
adopt a new and bogus right-wing a
Having never been he had no background as an activist to political identity.
Communist Party militant, The Marxist-informed contextualism
conceal.
criticism in the 1930s politics
that underpinned his art seemed remote both from the world of active
and from the polemics of Stalinist theoreticians. Indeed, Blunt
has been accused, probably unfairly, by one leading Marxist critic of de-politicizing art history
and trying to render
it
"formalist and value-
free." Blunt's basic premise, enunciated in the thirties,
art
was
to insist that
cannot be divorced from society:
Works
artists; artists are men; men and are in a large measure formed by the which they live. Therefore works of art cannot be
of art are produced by
live in society,
society in
considered historically except in
human and
ultimately in
social terms.
After a trip to Russia in the
summer
of 1935 his Marxist sympathies
became more
explicit in his articles as art critic of
intellectual,"
he declared,
The Spectator. "The no longer afraid to own to an interest in the practical matters of the world, and Communism is allowed to be a subject as interesting as Cubism." He went on to call for artists' unions and the transformation of museums from pleasure palaces into classrooms. 145 It was probably after his visit to Russia that Blunt began regular meetings with Arnold Deutsch. Though a radical voice in the art world, he was persuaded by Deutsch to affect indifference to Party politics. Michael Straight, a young American economist at Trinity who "is
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
216
joined the Apostles in discussions that he
mistake agent.
March
was
until early in
1936, concluded from Blunt's part in the
"totally unpolitical."
1937
when Blunt
He
did not realize his
tried to recruit
him
as a Soviet
146
The most important agent
talent-spotted by Blunt
was the Fifth Man,
the Trinity undergraduate John Cairncross. Together with Philby, Burgess, Blunt,
and Maclean, he
is
remembered by the Center
Magnificent Five, the ablest group of foreign agents in
as
one of the
KGB
history.
But for the conspiracy theories surrounding the career of Sir Roger Hollis, and the other false trails that confused the media mole hunt in the 1980s, Cairncross might well have been
unmasked
as the Fifth
Man
even before Gordievsky provided the clinching evidence. Though Cairncross
is
the last of the Five to be publicly identified, he successfully
penetrated a greater variety of the corridors of power and intelligence
than any of the other four. In
less
than a decade after leaving
Cam-
bridge, he served successively in the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the
private office of a SIS.
Gordievsky
government minister, the recalls
sigint
agency
GC & CS, and
Dmitri Svetanko, while head of the British desk
Chief Directorate, speaking of Cairncross "with awe, admiand respect." "Cairncross's achievements," said Svetanko, "were the equal of any of the Five except Philby." 147 His student academic in the First
ration
record was also as remarkable as that of any other
member
of the Five.
Cairncross was born in 1913 into a modest but intellectually gifted
Glasgow
family. His elder brother, Alec
KGB), was
(who had no connection
who became, succeshead of the Government Economic Service, Master of St. Peter's College, Oxford, and Chancellor of Glasgow University. Like Alec, John Cairncross won a scholarship to Hamilton Academy, near Glas-
with the
a distinguished economist
sively,
gow. In 1930,
at the age of seventeen,
the political traditions of
probably already influenced by
Red Clydeside and
the social injustices of the
depression, he entered
Glasgow University, where for two years he studied French, German, political economy and English. 148 He then moved to the Continent to improve his languages, spending the academic year 1933-34 in Paris at the Sorbonne. While there he gained the licence es lettres in only a year,
won
a scholarship to Trinity College,
Cambridge, and probably made contact with Munzenberg's World
Committee
for the Relief of the Victims of
German
Fascism.
By the time Cairncross arrived at Trinity to read French and German in October 1934, he was an open Communist. His licence from
Sigint,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
the Sorbonne allowed
him
to skip the
217
part of the modern-languages
first
149 degree course and graduate with a Cambridge B.A. in only two years. One of Cairncross's college supervisors in French literature was Anthony Blunt, who gave him a series of individual weekly tutorials (or "supervisions" as they are called at Cambridge). Blunt's patrician manner and Marxist intellectualism, apparently aloof from the harsh realities of the class struggle, jarred on the passionate young Scottish Communist. "I didn't like him," said Cairncross later, "and he didn't
like
me."
him for Burgess, who met CairnCambridge and established an immediate rapport with him. Forty years later, in an interview in which he concealed most of his KGB career, Cairncross acknowledged that he had found Burgess "fascinating, charming and utterly ruthless." 150 During one of Burgess's visits to Cambridge in 1935, he recruited Cairncross as a Comintern agent in the secret war against international fascism and put him in touch with Arnold Deutsch. 151 By 1936 Cairncross had broken all overt contact with the Communist Party and Blunt, however, talent-spotted
cross during one of his visits to
applied to join the Foreign Office. In the
from Cambridge with
first-class
summer
honors
elected by Trinity to a senior scholarship,
in
of 1936 he graduated
modern languages, was
and passed
at the top of the
Foreign Office entrance examinations, a hundred marks ahead of a
Con O'Neill (later a leading British diploautumn he became, after John King and Donald Maclean,
brilliant fellow of All Souls,
mat). In the
the third Soviet agent working in the Foreign Office. 152
The growing
potential of the
intelligence supplied to Pieck
Cambridge
Five, the importance of the
by Captain King from the Foreign
Office,
and the simultaneous development by Deutsch of an espionage ring
in
Woolwich Arsenal, determined INO at the beginning of 1936 to send Maly to London to take overall charge of NKVD illegal operations. The NKVD "legal" resident at the London embassy, Aron Vaclavovich Shuster, took no part in any of these operations beyond providing a channel of communication to Moscow Center and other the
forms of
illegal
support. 153
INO, admired Maly's great gifts in recruitand winning the loyalty of his agents, but remained
Slutsky, the head of ing, inspiring,
concerned by his tendency to remorse about his past career. After bibulous evenings in restaurants with his agents,
Maly was liable to Hede Massing
reminisce about some of the horrors he had witnessed.
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
218
later
wrote of him:
"A discreet man
of the world
when
sober, he lapsed
and fits of self-accusation when drunk. To learn of the nightmares under this polished exterior was frightening." Maly had a passionate love affair with one of Ignace Reiss's agents, named Gerda Frankfurter. "But Moscow," according to Hede Massing, "well into terrible depression
aware of Russian
his alcoholic inclinations, forced
girl
whom
him
into marriage with a
he disliked. She was to act as a combination
[of]
nurse and police guard." 154
Maly and
his wife arrived in
Austrian passports in the
name
London
early in 1936, using false
of Paul and Lydia Hardt.
He
intro-
duced himself to Captain King as "Mr. Petersen," an executive of an imaginary Dutch bank, which King's NKVD controller, Pieck, had
him was purchasing inside information from the Foreign Office. Initially King delivered copies of Foreign Office documents on his way home from work to Pieck's office in Buckingham Gate. From Buckingham Gate copies or originals of the documents were taken to Maly by a British Communist electrical engineer, Brian Goold-Verschoyle {alias Friend), who for some years had acted as a Comintern courier. Goold-Verschoyle, who had rebelled against a public-school education and been inspired by a romantic vision of the Soviet workerpeasant state, believed he was delivering political directives from the Communist International. He was shocked when one of King's packets came open and he discovered Foreign Office documents inside. Maly told
telegraphed the most important of King's material to Soviet embassy in Kensington, using the code
Moscow from the
name Mann. The remain-
der were taken by Goold-Verschoyle or another courier to be photo-
graphed
at a studio
run by Wolf Levit, a
German
NKVD
photogra-
pher. 155 Initially, Donald Maclean, who began his Foreign Office career League of Nations and Western Department (which dealt with Dutch, Iberian, Swiss, and League affairs), had access to a more limited
in the
range of Foreign Office material than the humbler but also more strategically placed King.
The most
useful intelligence he provided to the
NKVD probably concerned the Spanish Civil War, wrote
later:
"We
were
all
of which Maclean
united in wishing the French and Soviet
governments would intervene to save the Spanish government from Franco and the fascists." He probably conveyed to the the
NKVD
exaggerated view that British nonintervention was part of a broader
Germany designed to leave Stalin to face Maly saw Maclean chiefly as a long-term invest-
policy of appeasement toward
fascism alone. 156 But
Sigint,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
219
ment and urged him to concentrate during his early career in the Foreign Office less on obtaining intelligence than on advancing his own 157 In this Maclean was triumphantly succareer as rapidly as possible. cessful. The personnel department provided the warmest of testimonials when it recommended him in March 1938 to the British ambassador in
France for
his first foreign posting as third secretary in the Paris
embassy:
Maclean,
who
is
the son of the late Sir
Donald Maclean,
whom
you may remember as a Liberal Member of Parliament, has done extremely well during his first two years here and is one of the mainstays of the Western Department. He is a very nice individual indeed and has plenty of brains and keenness. He is, too, nice-looking and ought, we think, to be a success in Paris from the social as well as the
of view.
work point
158
By now Maclean's reputation had grown
so rapidly that he
was being
tipped as a future permanent under-secretary. 159
John Cairncross, who entered the Foreign Office a year
after
autumn of 1936, did not fit in nearly as easily. Over the next two years he worked in the American, League of Nations, Western, Maclean,
in the
and Central departments without finding a real niche for himself. For a time he worked with Maclean in the Western Department, gaining access to what he himself described as a "wealth of valuable information on the progress of the lean's easy
charm and
Civil
War
in Spain."
social graces;
160
though he
range of contacts within Whitehall, he did not
John
Cairncross lacked Mactried to cultivate a
make many
Colville, assistant private secretary to Neville
Chamberlain and
subsequently private secretary to Churchill, found him "a very gent,
though sometimes incoherent, bore."
wide
friends. Sir
intelli-
He later recalled that "Cairn-
was always asking people out to lunch ... He ate very slowly, slower than anyone I've ever known." Cairncross did, however, make detailed notes of his lunchtime conversations in Whitehall, which he passed on to the NKVD. 161 After his first year in the Foreign Office, Maly
cross
suggested to
ment
him
that he think of transferring to the Treasury, a depart-
that, unlike the
Foreign Office, the
He finally did so in October to see
him
go, having
1938.
NKVD had yet to penetrate.
162
The Foreign Office was probably glad
concluded that his awkward manner made him
unsuitable for a diplomatic career.
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
220
Burgess was doubtless frustrated by the ability of his recruit Cairncross to penetrate Whitehall more rapidly than he could. Late in
1936 he was taken on by the
BBC as a producer. After a training course
and producing, improbably, a series called Keep Fit with Miss Quigley, he moved to the Talks Department of the Home Service (now Radio 4)
and began
to seek out
men
with past or present intelligence connec-
whom he made the tempting offer of giving a talk on
tions to
the radio.
His most important new contact was David Footman, deputy head (later
head) of the Political Intelligence Department in SIS. 163 Footman
would doubtless have been horrified to learn that the producer of his talk on Albania in the summer of 1937 was an NKVD agent. But no such suspicion crossed his mind, and a year later, much impressed by Burgess's obvious flair for international relations, he helped him to get a job in SIS.
Burgess continued for some years to return regularly to bridge to attend meetings of the Apostles and left
Trinity for the
Warburg
Institute in
visit friends.
London
in 1937,
Cam-
Until Blunt
he consulted
with Burgess on suitable recruits for Soviet intelligence. Michael Straight concluded after his in
own attempted
1937 that Burgess was "the invisible
recruitment by Blunt early
man
behind Anthony." 164
was Leonard Henry ("Leo") Long, who Communist, in October 1935 with a brilliant academic reputation and a scholarship in modern languages. "I was a working-class boy," said Long later, "and had a deep sense of the inequity of society." 165 Blunt supervised his work in French and was Blunt's most important recruit arrived at Trinity, already a
probably chiefly responsible for his election to the Apostles in 1937.
At about the same
NKVD.
time, Blunt also recruited
him
to
work
May
for the
Like Straight, Long found Blunt's recruiting technique so
persuasive partly because he appeared compassionate rather than over-
Long later recalled, "never tried blackmailing or we shared a deep belief in the Communist During the Second World War Long was to be run personally
bearing. "Blunt,"
bullying me, because cause." 166
by Blunt as a Soviet subagent.
Though Kim Philby
ultimately
became the most important of the
Magnificent Five, his career took off more slowly than those of the other four. His unexciting work for the Review of Reviews after his return
from Vienna
left
him
intermittently despondent at
how
little
he was
achieving in the secret war against fascism and in need of encourage-
ment from Deutsch. His
first
minor success was
to gain acceptance
by
Sigint,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
221
pro-German Anglo-German Fellowship, whose "constant contact" with Goebbels and the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment was denounced in a secret Foreign Office memorandum. Philby's enthusiastic part-time work for the fellowship opened up the prospect of a full-time job starting a new trade journal financed by German money. Though in the end the job failed to materialize, Philby had a number of meetings with the German ambassador in London, von Ribbentrop, and paid several visits to Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry the
in Berlin.
167
Philby was in Berlin in July 1936 the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
when he heard the news of that war which gave him
was
major intelligence assignment, operating under journalistic
his first
cover.
It
"My
immediate assignment," he wrote
get first-hand information
usual his memoirs
however, makes
fail
it
on
all
to tell the
in his
memoirs, "was to
aspects of the fascist
whole
war
effort."
As
truth. Gordievsky's information,
possible to solve the chief remaining mystery about
1940 the
Philby's time in Spain. Early in
NKVD
defector Walter
Krivitsky visited England, where he was debriefed by Jane Archer,
whom
Philby described as the second-ablest
countered.
From
"elicited a tantalizing scrap of information
officer
he ever en-
about a young English
had sent to Spain during the Civil The "young English journalist" was Philby. The "tantalizing
journalist
War." 168
whom
MI5
Krivitsky, writes Philby in his memoirs, Mrs. Archer
Soviet intelligence
scrap of information" was about a plan to assassinate General Franco.
Early in 1937 Yezhov sent orders to Maly to use one of his British agents to travel to Spain
under journalistic cover, penetrate
General Franco's entourage, and help organize his assassination. 169
London news agency to give him a letter of accreditawar correspondent, and arrived in Spain in February 1937. Once there he bombarded The Times with unsolicited reports of the war written from areas controlled by Franco's forces. 170 His career as a Soviet agent in Spain was very nearly cut short before it began in Philby persuaded a tion as a free-lance
earnest. ally
By
Philby's
own
reckoning, he escaped detection "almost
by the skin of my teeth."
Two months
after
liter-
he arrived in Spain he
was wakened in the middle of the night by two Nationalist Civil Guards hammering on his bedroom door. As he dressed under the watchful eye of the guards he realized he had
left his
NKVD code written on a piece
of ricepaper in the ticket pocket of his trousers. Unable to dispose of it on the
an
way to the Civil Guards headquarters, he found himself ushered into office
lit
by a single bright naked lightbulb to be interrogated by "an
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
222
undersized major of the Civil Guard, elderly, bald and sour." Then he
was told to turn out his pockets. The next few seconds were among the most critical in Philby's life:
my wallet, I threw it down on [the] table, giving moment a flick of the wrist which sent it spinning towards the far end. As I had hoped, all three men made a
Taking it
first
at the last
dive at
it,
spreadeagling themselves across the table. Con-
fronted by three pairs of buttocks,
I
scooped the scrap of
paper out of my trousers, a crunch and a swallow, and
it
was
gone. 171
Thereafter Philby's fortunes rapidly improved. In officially
Spain.
by The Times as one of
He traveled
to
London
On
The Times and Maly.
its
May he was taken on
two correspondents
to settle the details of his
in Nationalist
work with both
his return to Spain Philby strengthened his
cover by acquiring as a mistress Lady Frances ("Bunny") Lindsay-
Hogg, the divorced wife of an English baronet and an ardent
royalist.
Bunny later recalled: "He communism or anything like
Philby dissembled brilliantly even in bed.
never breathed a word about socialism,
At the end of the year Philby became a local hero. Three journala car in which he had been traveling were fatally injured by an artillery shell. Philby himself was slightly wounded. He reported modestly to the readers of The Times: "Your correspondent was taken to a first aid station where light head injuries were speedily treated. Meanwhile Spanish officers worked gallantly in an attempt to that."
ists sitting in
.
rescue the occupants of the car regardless of falling shells."
.
.
On March 2
General Franco himself pinned onto Philby's breast the Red Cross
Communist M.P., Willie Gallacher, House of Commons. Philby later claimed, probably
of Military Merit. Britain's only protested in the accurately:
My
wounding
and
intelligence
in
Spain helped
work
my work—both
journalism
—no end. Before then there had been
a lot of criticism of British journalists from Franco officers
who seemed
to think that the British in general
must be a
of communists because so
lot
many were fighting with the International Brigade. After I had been wounded and decorated by Franco himself, I became known as "the English-decorated-by-Franco" and
all
sorts of doors
opened for me.
Sigint,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
In the opinion of one British diplomat "There was
know about the extent of the German and
not
little
223
that Philby did
Italian military participa-
on the Franco side." Philby passed on the intelligence he gathered from within the Franco camp at meetings with NKVD officers across 172 But the mission the French border at Hendaye or St. Jean de Luz.
tion
which Maly had sent Philby to Spain, to help organize the assassinawas abandoned in the summer of 1937 before Philby had
for
tion of Franco,
173 the confidence of Franco's entourage.
won
In July 1937 fell
Maly was
recalled to
Moscow. Most
INO
officers
under suspicion during the paranoia of the purges; only a minority
survived the Great Terror. Maly's religious background and revulsion
made him an obvious suspect. The high praise he had received from Yezhov and the commendation from Stalin in the previous year left him with a faint hope that he might somehow be able to counter whatever charges were laid against him. But his main motive for returning was a curious sense of fatalism. He told Elizabeth Poat the use of terror
retsky, the wife of Ignace Reiss: kill
me
"They
here. Better to die there."
174
similar order to return, records that
a former priest
I
will kill
me
there and they will
Aleksandr Orlov,
Maly
haven't got a chance. But
who refused a know that as
told him: "I I
have decided to go there
so that nobody can say: 'That priest might have been a real spy after " 175 all.' The citation beneath Maly's portrait in the First Chief Directorate
Memory Room
records that he was shot late in 1937. 176
Maly's liquidation for over a year.
left
Kim
Philby without a regular controller
At the time of Maly's
recall final details of the plan,
involving Philby, to assassinate General Franco, had yet to be approved
by Moscow Center. Thereafter
was
at least partly
who knew some
it was shelved. The assassination plan compromised by the defection of Walter Krivitsky,
of the details of
it
including the involvement of "a
young English journalist." There had also been a change of NKVD priorities. For the remainder of the Civil War, the destruction of Trotskyists in Spain was a higher priority than the liquidation of Franco. 177
in
But for his recall to Moscow, Maly might have been arrested London. Though MI5 had no knowledge of either NKVD penetra-
tion of the Foreign Office or the recruitment of the
of
its
agents,
Olga Grey, succeeded
in
Cambridge
Five, one
winning the confidence of the
head of a Soviet spy ring inside Woolwich Arsenal, Percy Glading, a veteran Comintern agent run successively by Deutsch and Maly. In February 1937 Miss Grey was asked by Glading to rent an apartment
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
224
in
visited
by Maly,
described to Olga in the
to
Two months later the apartwhom Glading introduced as Mr. Peters and
Kensington to be used as a safe house.
ment was
Grey
as "an Austrian
Russian cavalry."
Moscow, Glading
On August
who had served during the war
16, a
few weeks after Maly's
arrived at the apartment with Deutsch,
recall
whom
he
introduced as Mr. Stephens. Miss Grey agreed to help Mr. Stephens
photograph documents brought to the apartment by Glading. She was
no
linguist
and never discovered the Stephenses' nationality, let alone Arnold and Josefine Deutsch spoke
their true identity; in her presence to each other in French.
Late in October Miss Grey noted the reference number of a
MI 5
to
it as the plan of a new fourteen-inch naval gun. Early November Glading announced that the Stephenses were returning
to
document photographed by
Josefine Deutsch,
which enabled
identify
Moscow
because of the
expected to remain in to
London
illness
in
of their daughter; Mrs. Stephens was
Moscow and
her husband was unlikely to return
until after Christmas. In the
meantime Miss Grey was asked
to practice using the photographic apparatus installed in the
by Mrs. Stephens so that she could take over from
her.
apartment
178
Unlike the recall of Maly, that of the Deutsch family seems to
have been prompted their cover
was
in
less
by the paranoia of the purges than by fear that
danger of being blown. In the summer of 1937 the
Comintern agent Edith Tudor-Hart, used by the NKVD chiefly as a compromising details about the Deutsches' intelligence operations. At about the same time Deutsch's application to found a private limited company, which would give him a permanent base in London, was turned down. With his residence permit about to expire, he was interviewed by the police and asked for
courier, lost a diary that contained
details of his plans to leave the country. 179
The
arrest of
Glading and the Woolwich Arsenal spy ring by
the Special Branch in January 1938 ended any prospect that Deutsch
might return to Britain. lier,
Had MI5 and
the Special Branch
they would probably have arrested either
They delayed
moved
Maly or Deutsch
ear-
—
or,
hope of unraveling the spy ring as fully as possible before arresting Glading. 180 MI5 was not to know that by the beginning of 1938 the NKVD's entire London residency and illegal apparat would have been recalled to Moscow. Unlike Maly and most (if not all) of the London residency, Arnold and Josefine Deutsch were not liquidated on their return to Moscow. Arnold worked for
just possibly, both.
in the
several years in the Center as a handwriting
and
forgeries expert.
The
Sigint,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
citation beneath his portrait in the First Chief Directorate
Room to
225
Memory
reveals that he was parachuted into his native Austria in 1942
conduct intelligence operations behind enemy
lines,
but was quickly
caught and executed by the Nazis. 181
The departure of Deutsch and
London
at the
end of 1937
left
the entire
NKVD residency from
the Magnificent Five and the other Soviet
agents in Britain without either direction or support. the abandoned agents
NKVD officers on
managed
to
make
the Continent, there
Though some of
intermittent contact with
was serious disruption during Moscow Center and in its
1938 both in the flow of intelligence to
handling by the heavily purged INO. 182
The
significance of the
first
phase of Soviet penetration of
Maly and Deutsch, has main success was the recruitment of two cipher clerks Oldham and King and two young diplomats Maclean and Cairncross in the Foreign Office. Important though the contents of some of the documents they provided undoubtedly were, the documents were more important still in assisting the code breakers of the combined NKVD-Fourth Department sigint unit. The myth has Whitehall, brought to an end by the recall of
been generally misunderstood.
—
—
Its
—
developed that code-breaking coups are achieved simply by brilliant mathematicians, nowadays assisted by huge banks of computers. In reality,
most major breaks of high-grade code and cipher systems on
which evidence
is
available were achieved with the help of at least
partial information
code breakers
in the
on those systems provided by espionage. Soviet 1930s had vastly greater assistance from espionage
than their Western counterparts. All four
NKVD agents in the Foreign
which in some compared with the ciphered versions as an aid in
Office provided plain-text British diplomatic telegrams,
instances could be
breaking the ciphers. All four were also in a position to supply
gence on the cipher systems themselves.
Gordievsky has
little
It is
safe to conclude,
intelli-
though
direct information, that the successes of Soviet
code breakers against the Japanese in the 1930s were paralleled by successes on a perhaps similar scale against the British. 183
NKVD and Fourth Department, however, some disruption at the climax of the Great Terror. Late in 1937 both Gleb Boky, the head of the combined NKVD-Fourth Department sigint unit, and his deputy, Colonel Kharkevich, were shot. After Boky's arrest, a secret cache of gold and silver coins was discovered in his suite. Boky's successor, Shapiro, lasted only a month before being arrested in his turn. At a lower level, however, the cryptanalysts Like the rest of the
Soviet sigint suffered
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
226
were
far less
purged than INO.
S.
Tolstoy, the head of the Japanese
perhaps the most productive in the unit, remained in
section,
office
throughout both the Terror and the Second World War. 184
Once Terror,
its
the
NKVD
recovered from the disruption of the Great
penetration agents in Britain and elsewhere were to achieve
greater successes than ever before.
During the Second World
War
Soviet agents in Britain succeeded in penetrating not merely Whitehall
but the British intelligence services themselves.
Though
the United States represented a
Britain for Soviet intelligence for
much
lower priority than
most of the 1930s,
As
it
was even more
most important achievement of Soviet espionage targeted on the United States before the outbreak of war was the enormous assistance it provided to Soviet sigint. Before and during the Second World War, the American emvulnerable to Soviet penetration.
bassy in
Moscow was
in Britain, the
probably even more comprehensively penetrated
than that of any other major power. Diplomatic relations with the Soviet
Union were established
United States had no intelligence
in
"We
Bullitt,
at a time
when
first
American am-
wrote to the State Department
should never send a spy to the Soviet Union. There
weapon at once so disarming and effective in nists as sheer honesty." 185
the
agency and American military
was both small and disorganized. The
bassador in Moscow, William C. in 1936:
November 1933
civilian intelligence
relations with the
is
no
Commu-
That honesty was taken to remarkable George Kennan, one of the original members of Bullitt's staff, later recalled that during its first winter of 1933-34 the embassy had no codes, no safes, no couriers, and virtually no security: "Communications with our government went through the regular telegraphic office and lay on the table for the Soviet government to see." When a security system was installed, it was ineffective. At Bullitt's request, his embassy became the first to be guarded by marines. They were quickly provided with mistresses by the NKVD. Charles (Chip) Bohlen, like Kennan both a founder member of the embassy and a future ambassador in Moscow, was sitting one day in the lobby of the Savoy Hotel, where the marines were then lodged, when a heavily made-up Russian woman walked up to the reception desk and said she wished to go up to Marine Sergeant O'Dean's room. "I," she announced, "am his Russian teacher." 186 With the assistance of similar "Russian teachers," the NKVD recruited at least one of the first group of American cipher clerks sent to the Moscow embassy, Tyler G. Kent, lengths.
Sigint,
who
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
227
probably supplied cipher materials as well as classified docu-
ments. 187
The ambassador's embassy
itself.
Bohlen
residence, Spaso House,
later recalled
how
its
was
as porous as the
telephones "tinkled half-
heartedly and indiscriminately, day and night; and when one answered them there was often no reaction at the other end, only labored breathing and a baffling verbal silence." Sergei, the caretaker, claimed ingeniously that the heavy breathing was that of the former people's commissar for foreign affairs, Chicherin, by now half crazed and living alone in a nearby apartment. Though his manner was genial and obliging, Sergei helped to organize the bugging of the embassy from his apartment, which he kept permanently locked. Not till Bohlen returned as ambassador in 1952 did the embassy demand a key to Sergei's locked apartment. By the time a key was grudgingly produced, after a delay of several weeks,
all
Sergei's apparatus had, predictably,
Sergei himself retired shortly afterward.
been removed.
188
Most American diplomats in the 1930s had little grasp of the and even less of Soviet sigint. Joseph E. Davies, who succeeded Bullitt as ambassador from 1936 to 1938, had less grasp than most. In Bohlen's view, "He had gone to the Soviet Union sublimely ignorant of even the most elementary realities of the
effectiveness of Soviet penetration
Soviet system and of
ideology. ...
its
He
never even faintly understood
the purges, going far toward accepting the official Soviet version of the existence of a conspiracy against the state."
Colonel (later Brigadier General) Phillip R. Faymonville, military attache
from 1934
to 1939,
though one of the embassy's few fluent
Russian speakers, was even more naive than Davies. Bohlen believed he had "a definite pro-Russian bias"; 189 Major Ivan D. Yeaton, military attache from 1939 to 1941,
of the
NKVD." When
came
Yeaton
to regard
left
for
Washington, gave him two
Faymonville as "a captive
Moscow
in 1939,
Faymonville,
French army manuals and asked him to give them to a friend in the Red Army. Faymonville also urged Yeaton to reemploy his Russian chauffeur, who, he said, would prove his "most valuable contact in Moscow." In the event Yeaton sacked the chauffeur and saw him a fortnight later dressed in
by then
in
the uniform of an
NKVD
On his arrival
in
captain.
Moscow,
classified
190
initially as assistant military attache,
Yeaton was appalled by the state of embassy security. The embassy codes, he concluded, were compromised, and the consulate clerks gave frequent parties with girls "generously provided" by the
NKVD.
Yea-
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
228
ton also noted a
were pursued, doubtless with
officials
lerinas
number of homosexual
from the Moscow
ballet.
liaisons.
NKVD
191
Senior embassy
encouragement, by bal-
According to Bohlen: "There were
They around talking and
usually two or three ballerinas running around the Embassy.
would go there
and supper and would
for lunch
drinking until dawn.
.
.
.
Many temporary
sit
liaisons
were formed."
Attempts to seduce the ambassador, however, seem to have been unsuccessful.
One
of the ballerinas spent
much
professing "undying love" for Bullitt, as her "sun,
moon and
stars"
of her time at the embassy
whom
she eloquently described
—apparently without
effect.
192
Yeaton's criticisms of embassy security irritated rather than
impressed most of his colleagues.
When
he reported that the French
housekeeper of Laurence A. Steinhardt, ambassador from 1938 to 1942,
was selling embassy supplies on the Moscow black market, Yeaton was "admonished" by Steinhardt, who refused to believe him. Shortly before the introduction of new State Department codes early in 1940, Yeaton decided on his own initiative to ask, via military intelligence in Washington, for an FBI agent to inspect the embassy to ensure that the new codes were not compromised like their predecessors. 193 The FBI agent, posing as a courier, visited the embassy's code room at night and discovered the safes open and code books lying with messages on the table. At one point the code clerk on duty left the code room unattended with the door open for forty-five minutes. It was clear that the Russian employees of the embassy, who were almost as numerous as the Americans, had many opportunities for access to both ciphers and classified documents. The agent also reported to the FBI: "Not being able to find normal female companionship, the men attached to the embassy turn to a group of Soviet prostitutes for companionship. ... It is reported that
all
of these girls report constantly to the
GPU."
In addition, acts
of homosexual "perversion" had taken place in the embassy code
room. 194 Following the FBI report, "a small group of bachelors" was ordered back to Washington, and some improvements were made in
embassy
security. 195
But the FBI agent was not a technical expert. It did not occur to him to search the embassy for listening devices. When a search was finally ordered in 1944, a navy electrician discovered 120 hidden microphones on his
first
sweep of the building. Thereafter,
member of the embassy staff, "they kept turning up, in of any new tables or chairs which were delivered, in the plaster
according to a the legs
of the walls, any and everywhere." 196 Until the later 1930s intelligence gathering within the United
Sigint,
States
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
was a comparatively low
priority for
however, several influential
mid-thirties,
Moscow
Center.
underground
cells
229
By
the
of the
American Communist Party (CPUSA) were in varying degrees of contact with Comintern and Soviet intelligence officers. The main link between the Party underground and Soviet intelligence was Whittaker Chambers, a Communist journalist who was instructed in 1932 to break 197 In 1933 Chambers was sent to Moscow overt contact with the Party. His main controller on his return was Sandor training. for intelligence Goldberger, a former Comintern apparatchik bearing a striking resemblance to Groucho Marx.
As
well as
working for the Fourth DepartJ. Peters, a grey eminence
ment, Goldberger became, under the alias of the
CPUSA
for a quarter of a century.
198
Chambers began acting as courier between Goldberger cell in Washington founded by Harold Ware, a Communist official in the Department of Agriculture killed in a car In 1934
and an underground crash in 1935.
Its
other leading members, according to Chambers's later
testimony, included John (later
of the
J.
Abt of the Department of Agriculture
Works Progress Administration,
the staff of the Senate
Committee on Education and Labor, and the Justice Department); Nathan Witt of the Department of Agriculture (later of the National Labor Relations Board); Lee Pressman of the Department of Agriculture (later of the
Works Progress
Department of Agriculture
Administration); Alger Hiss of the
(later of the Special
Senate Committee
and Donald Hiss of the State Department (later of the Labor Department); Henry H. Collins of the National Recovery Administration (later of the Department of Agriculture); Charles Kramer (Krevitsky) of the National Labor Relations Board (later of the Office of Price Administration and the Senate Subcommittee on War Mobilization); and Victor Perlo of the Office of Price Administration (later of the War Production Board and the Treasury Investigation of the Munitions Industry, the Justice Department,
the State Department); his brother
Department).
member of the Ware cell, was become the founder member of a "parallel apparatus." 199 Among other new agents who entered Chambers's net in 1935-36 were Harry Dexter White, a high flyer in the Treasury Department; George Silverman, a government statistician (later employed in the Pentagon), who probably recruited White; and Julian Wadleigh, an Oxford-educated economist who moved in 1936 from the Department of Agriculture to the Trade Agreements Division of the State DepartIn 1935 Alger Hiss, the ablest
moved by Chambers
to
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
230
much the same as Cambridge Five: the lure of the Comintern's secret war against fascism. Wadleigh wrote later: "When the Communist International represented the only world force effectively resisting Nazi Germany and the other aggressor powers, I had offered my services to the Soviet underground in Washington as one small contribution to help ment. The motivation of the Washington moles was that of the
stem the
fascist tide."
In the
200
autumn of 1936
a
new Fourth Department
resident,
Boris Bykov, arrived to take control of Chambers's network from Goldberger.
Chambers
later described
Bykov,
a middle-aged man, about five feet seven,
who wore
hair,
expensive worsted
suits,
whom tall
he knew as Peter, as
with thinning, reddish
always with a hat, invariably
hand inside his jacket ("Napoleon style"), had an 201 Bykov "authoritative" manner and a "ferret-like way about him." suggested that the members of the underground be offered money to "put them in a productive frame of mind." When Chambers objected, Bykov gave him a thousand dollars then a considerable sum to buy Bokhara rugs for his four most valuable agents: Hiss, White, Silverman, and Wadleigh. Each was told that the rugs were "gifts from the Russian people to their American comrades." 202 In Britain by this time Soviet intelligence had so far succeeded carried his right
—
in penetrating only
—
one of the Whitehall ministries. In Washington, by
contrast, Soviet agents
were already
installed in a steadily
widening
area of the Roosevelt administration. But the penetration of Washing-
much lower priority than the penetration of Whitehall. Moscow was still far more interested in the major European powers and Japan than in the United States. Bykov was not much concerned with ton was a
the details of American policy making. Like Goldberger, his main aim
was
to collect intelligence
on Germany and Japan,
thing that bears on the preparations the
making
in particular "every-
Germans and Japanese
are
war against us." Bykov berated Wadleigh for failing to provide State Department documents on German and Japanese policy.
for
203
He was more satisfied with Hiss, who in the autumn of 1936 became assistant to Francis B. Sayre, assistant secretary of State. Hiss had access to a wide variety of telegrams from both diplomats and military attaches. to
Chambers
By
early 1937 he
at intervals of
was delivering packets of documents
about a week or ten days. Perhaps the most
valuable from Bykov's point of view were those that dealt with Japanese
.
Sigint,
Agent Penetration, and the Magnificent Five
policy during the Sino- Japanese
War.
A cable of March 2,
231
1937, cited
that they will be able unnamed "Japanese army chiefs wage a successful war against Russia while holding the Chinese in check on their flank with little difficulty." 204 Within the State Department Hiss covered his tracks as successfully as Maclean in the Foreign
the view of
.
.
.
to
Even Wadleigh had no idea that Hiss was working for the him as a very moderate New Dealer with
Office.
Russians: "I regarded
205 strongly conservative instincts." Say re later concluded that the docu-
ments provided by Hiss would "presumably" have enabled the Russians to break U.S. diplomatic ciphers.
206
It
did not occur to
him
that,
thanks to the penetration of the American embassy in Moscow, they
were broken already.
The comparatively low lection in the
priority given to Soviet intelligence col-
United States was reflected
in
both the personnel and the
methods employed. Goldberger and Bykov did not begin to compare with Deutsch and Maly. During his intelligence training in
Moscow
in
1933 Chambers, no doubt against instructions, sent postcards to his friends at
Back
home
—one
to
bestow "a Soviet blessing" on a newborn baby.
United States he engaged
in the
in
some
intelligence mystification,
adopting for example a slightly foreign accent, which persuaded leigh
and some of
his other agents that
Wad-
he was not American. 207 But
Goldberger and Bykov both allowed Chambers to get away with
mentary breaches of intelligence tradecraft. Some of
was involved
that he
in
his friends
ele-
knew
"highly secretive work"; on one occasion he
was "engaged in counterespionage for the Soviets Chambers treated his leading agent, Alger Hiss, as a family friend; he and his wife went to stay in the Hiss apartment. Others of Chambers's agents were to be found socializing at each revealed that he
against the Japanese."
other's
homes,
The
visiting art galleries,
and playing
table tennis together.
was Chambers himself. In Moscow. Increasingly disillusioned
greatest security risk, however,
July 1937 he
was summoned
to
with Stalinism and rightly fearful of the fate that awaited him, bers temporized for the next nine months. all
contact with the
in hiding,
208
NKVD.
he began to
Then
in April
Cham-
1938 he broke
After spending the rest of the year largely
tell his
story to sympathetic listeners.
209
In a
security-conscious state Chambers's extensive knowledge of Soviet penetration in
NKVD
Washington would have had catastrophic consequences for Washington was even feebler than
operations. But security in
232
in
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
London. Over the next few years Chambers was to discover that the the administration from the president downward had no seri-
FBI and
210 The state that at the end of the Second ous interest in his revelations.
World War was
to be targeted
by the
NKVD as "the Main Adversary"
was, until that point, the state most vulnerable to Soviet penetration.
Founders of the
tlin
KGB
with Dz'erzhinsky. tffcwV/ King 6
collection)
IliflMHfliii
iSiiSai-.iian
The
statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky in
Dzerzhinsky Square, Moscow, outside headquarters. (David King Collection)
KGB
Dzerzhinsky's statue topples before an enthusiastic
Poland,
y
m "
-
i i
i Mwnmm ©
crowd
November
in
Warsaw
in his native
1989. (Associated Press)
Opposite page: Above Stalin as a pallbearer (David King at Dzerzhinsky's funeral in 1926. Collection)
Below Mikhail Trilisser (fourth full figure from the left and inset), first head of KGB the foreign operations, takes the oath to
Cheka
flag.
Collection)
(National Archive; David King
OGPU
medal with Dzerzhinsky's head
wreath to commemorate the tenth anniversary (in 1927) of the founding of the Cheka. (David King Collection)
framed
in laurel
Oleg Gordievsky's identity card as colonel in the KGB, incorporating the shield from the original emblem of the Cheka.
KOMMTET rOCYMPCTBEHHOft BE30IIACH0CTH yflOCTOBEPEHHE HK N? 3406
COCTOHT B aamKHOCTH S/PZ.C
/caaaMMaaaBflMMfciQr y^ocTOBepexya paspeinrao xptMM* n nooicHMt orHtcrpcxbHOro opyvnra.
ji.
*£k£S)Stef
Jff u«^c^ci^e>e.f
I
Recruiters and Controllers of the Five
>->,
Teodor Maly, former Catholic priest and celebrated KGB illegal whose portrait hangs
and
today in the Memory Room of the KGB First Chief Directorate (Foreign Intelligence).
to Maly's in the
IN Dr
Dr. Arnold Deutsch, protege of first
Teodor Maly
controller in England of the
Magnificent Five, whose portrait hangs next
FCD Memory Room.
DIESEM HAUSE LEBTE
ARNOLD DEUTSCH
WAHREND DER NATIONALSOZIAUSTISCHEN HERRSCHAFT WURDE ER IM ALTER VON 38 JAHREN IM NOVEMBER 1912 VON DEN SSFASCHISTEN ERMQRBET. ER KAMPFTE F been that of a go-between', according to official! at the UN, relaying
South African requeiti helping African
Reagan
1
lo
Waahinglt
eraU
to
widen
their miliur
babwe Ai South African t into aouthem Angola in Kirkpatnck played the
role of
|
Kryuchkov and the
FCD
Prezydent Wojciech Jaruzeiski przyjaj
Wladimira Kriuczkowa
26 bm. prezydent
Wojciech Jaruzeiski przyjql przebywajqcego z roboczq wlzytq w Polsce przewodniczqcego Komite'tu Bezpieczeiistwa Paristwowe-
go ZSRR Wladimira Kriuczkowa.
Wizyta u premiera Mazowieckiego Tego samego dnio prezes Rady Ministrow Tadeusz Mazowiecki przyjql Wladimira Kriuczkowa.
W
spotkaniu uczestniczy! gen. broni Czeslaw Kiszczak.
Vladimir Kryuchkov, head of the the
first
FCD
foreign intelligence chief to
1974-88,
become
chairman of the KGB. (Associated Press)
The FCD's Finnish-designed headquarters
at
Yasenevo. The layout appears
in
Appendix C.
The Gorbachev Era 1985Abroad, as
at
Yasenevo, the working routine of
have changed
little
KR
work
KR
The
30 to
X
ratio of officers in
many
Most
era.
PR (Political
X
(Scientific
has the status of deputy
residencies
new
Before their arrival
30.
Gorbachev
(Counterintelligence and Security), or line
seems to
officers
one of three "lines":
in
and Technological). The head of each resident.
FCD
since the beginning of the
officers in foreign residencies
Intelligence),
617
is
roughly
PR
40
to
would have attended
officers
a series of alarmist briefings on the ever-present danger of "provocations" by Western intelligence services. In Gordievsky's experience,
they began by suspecting their neighbors, local shopkeepers, even the
London parks they
gardeners in the
crossed,
and imagined themselves
under constant surveillance. Most gradually got over
The working day officers
it.
PR
a.m.
in the residency begins at 8:30
line
begin the day by looking over the day's newspapers. In London,
they are expected to read
all
the main daily and
Sunday newspapers,
together with periodicals, of which the Economist and Private Eye are
probably read with greatest attention. At the start of each day residency officials collect their
most
larger than zipper.
working satchels (papka) from the
briefcases,
tional contacts ter.
officer
Though
all his
opera-
used to draft telegrams and reports to Mos-
usually kept on his key ring.
emblem and At the end of each
his
working
satchel, applies a piece of Plasticine his seal
on
18
it.
Soviet embassies send their reports to
KGB
munications are
OT
is
end of the zipper and presses
nary paper,
the officer's working
is
has an individual seal with a distinctive
is
working day he closes to the
their contents
which contains notes on
and the main items from correspondence with the Cen-
number, which
an
tetrad),
Another notebook
cow. Each
These are
have two compartments, and open with a
The most important of
notebook (rabochaya
safe.
residents use
first
35-mm
enciphered by a
Moscow on ordi-
film negative. Residents'
com-
KGB cipher clerk, then filmed by
(operational and technical support) operative. Incoming corre-
spondence from the Center arrives on developed a microfilm reader.
By
film,
which
read on
is
the beginning of the Gorbachev era there
an increasing tendency to print out paper copies of important
was
commu-
nications from the microfilm. Report telegrams to the Center began
with a standard formula, as in the following example.
Comrade
IVANOV
1-77-81090-91-111-126
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
618
This decodes as follows:
"IVANOV" to
is
which the telegram
the code
is
name
for the
department
in the
Center
addressed, in this case the First (North Ameri-
can) Department.
"I" indicates that the telegram
is
reporting intelligence, rather
than, say, active measures or operational details concerning agent
running.
Number
sequences beginning with 7
drafted: 77 indicates drafting
tell
how
the text was
by the residency, 78 by the source, 79 the
translation of an official text.
The number
8 prefaces the
month and year of the
report, in this
case October 1990.
The number in this instance),
9 indicates the type of source: 91
is
an agent
(as
92 a confidential contact, 93 a target for close study
(razrabotka), 94 an official contact.
The number
1 1
prefaces assessments of reliability:
1 1 1
is reli-
able (as in this case), 112 untested, 113 unreliable.
The number
12 refers to the occupation of the source; for
example, 121 indicates a source in government, 126 in the foreign ministry, 1213 in the press. 19
In Gordievsky's experiences, however,
was
far less precise. Residencies
would
much
KGB
reporting
rarely fabricate details about,
or intelligence from, individual agents. But in reports on particular topics they
would commonly
attribute to
unnamed
agents information
obtained from the media or even invent details they thought would please the Center.
Such practices were
of the Gorbachev era.
On March
still
common
25, 1985, the
at the beginning
London residency was
asked for urgent information on British reactions to Gorbachev's meetings with the Consultative
Unable
Committee of the
Socialist International.
to contact residency sources in the time available, the
simply invented a series of responses flattering to Gorbachev; as
its
PR it
line
gave
sources a range of fictional contacts. Next day the residency was
asked for another urgent report, this time on negotiations on Spanish
and Portuguese entry to the European Community. This time the PR line reports officer V. K. Zamorin simply went through the British press and concocted a report attributed once again to secret or confidential sources. Soon afterward the residency found an article that impressed it in the Economist Foreign Report, identifying areas in which the Soviet
Union had succeeded in acquiring advanced Western technology and it had failed. Knowing that the article would be rejected
others where
The Gorbachev Era 1985-
619
by the Center as disinformation, the residency did not send it to Moscow. Instead it sent a report based on the article to the Center, claiming that
it
derived from residency contacts.
had been
As most officers in the Center when stationed abroad,
guilty of similar abuses themselves
they rarely voiced their suspicions about the source of reports they received.
Making contact with cies see as their
some of the
20
fully recruited agents,
most important form of
which
residen-
all
intelligence collection,
is
an
enormously labor-intensive business because of the elaborate countervous with an agent residency at to
1
p.m.,
down by
KGB
For a rendezwould usually leave the drive by an elaborate route worked out beforehand
surveillance procedures laid at
4 p.m., a case
tradecraft.
officer
an inconspicuous parking place, preferably near a large block of
apartments.
He would
avoid parking either outside a private house
might attract attention or
where
his diplomatic license plate
ing lot
where the police might carry out checks. After parking his
car the case officer
would be picked up by another
officer,
in a park-
own
who would
drive around for an hour checking that they were not under surveil-
Meanwhile the KR (counterintelligence) line in the embassy would be trying to monitor radio communications from surveillance teams of the local security service to detect any sign that the case officer or the agent was being followed: an activity code-named "Impulse." lance.
The car
radios of the case officer and his colleague were tuned to the
wavelength of the embassy transmitter, which broadcast a coded warning consisting simply of the repetition in
Morse of one
alphabet (the letter chosen indicating the
KGB
warning was directed). At about
letter of the
officer to
whom
the
no surveillance had been colleague's car and make his way
3 P.M., if
would leave his on foot and by public transport to the 4 p.m. rendezvous with the
detected, the officer
agent. 21
Despite the
all
the changes in the
main operational
KGB
over the
priority of its foreign intelligence
last half
century,
arm has
scarcely
altered since the recruitment of the Magnificent Five. In the operational
work plan circulated to foreign residencies, Kryuchkov repeated the traditional formula: "The main effort must be concentrated on acquiring valuable agents." He went on to exhort residencies section of the 1984
to explore
new
possibilities of agent
recruitment "especially
among
young people with prospects for penetrating targets of interest to us." 22 There is no indication that Kryuchkov has changed his mind since becoming chairman of the KGB in 1988.
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
620
From
moment
came to power in March 1985, Mikhail for KGB foreign operations. First, main priorities Gorbachev saw two he was convinced that a dynamic foreign policy required a dynamic intelligence service. The unprecedented range of initiatives on which he embarked abroad made it vital to have the fullest possible political intelligence on Western responses to them. The increased demands on the PR line were already apparent before Gordievsky's escape from Russia in the summer of 1985 and have no doubt expanded since. The main priority of the FCD as it entered the 1990s was clearly exemplified by the choice of Leonid Vladimirovich Shebarshin to succeed Kryuchkov as its head in September 1988. 23 Like Aleksandr Semyonovich Panyushkin, head of the FCD from 1953 to 1956, Shebarshin began his career as a straight diplomat, serving in Pakistan from 1958 to 1962 and again from 1966 to 1968, where he began cooperating with the KGB residency. Following his second term in Pakistan, he transferred to the KGB and after training at the Andropov Institute began work at Yasenevo. In 1971 he was posted to India, where he headed the PR line before becoming main resident in New Delhi from 1975 to 1977. After the fall of the Shah in 1979 he became resident in Teheran, remaining there until his expulsion the
that he
When Gordievsky left the FCD in the summer of 1985,
in 1983.
Shebar-
shin had been working for about a year as deputy head of Directorate
RI, which prepares
FCD
reports for the top Soviet leadership. 24
For
Shebarshin to have leapfrogged several more senior candidates to succeed Kryuchkov in 1988
is
a certain indication that his reports in the
previous few years had greatly impressed the Politburo. to
And
for
them
have impressed the Politburo, they must have dealt with such major
issues as the West's response to the era. Just as
by
his briefings to
motion dence
to
"new thinking" of the Gorbachev
Gordievsky's appointment as London resident was helped
Gorbachev
head of the
FCD
in
December
1984, so Shebarshin's pro-
probably also reflects Gorbachev's confi-
in his intelligence assessments.
During the 1990s the
KGB
will
continue to exploit the tradi-
tional fascination of the Soviet leadership with highly classified reports.
As
in the past, the
material
it
KGB
doubtless continues to present
some of the
obtains from open sources as coming from secret agents.
Shebarshin defines the main function of the
FCD as "the task of ensur-
ing that the Soviet leadership has reliable and accurate information
about the real plans and designs of the leading Western countries with
The Gorbachev Era 1985-
621
regard to our country and about the most important international
problems." 25 The
FCD will continue for as long as possible to foster the
myth
truly understands the West. Its influence will only be
that only
it
increased by the Soviet Union's military, ideological, and economic
problems.
As
the
Warsaw Pact
gradually disintegrates, the Kremlin
is
withdrawing hundreds of thousands of troops from Eastern Europe.
And
as the ideological foundations of the Soviet state begin to crumble,
Moscow's
Communist faith is economy is simultaneously
prestige as the pilgrim center of the
crumbling, too.
The
crisis in the Soviet
compelling a decline in Soviet aid to developing countries. Intelligence thus takes on an enhanced importance as a
means of preserving the
Soviet Union's declining influence in the outside world.
Gorbachev's second main interest
in Soviet foreign intelligence opera-
and technological espionage (S&T). When he addressed the staff of the London embassy at a private meeting attended by Gordievsky on December 15, 1984, he singled out for praise the achievements of the FCD Directorate T and its Line X officers abroad. It was already clear that Gorbachev regarded covert acquisition of Western technology as an important part of economic tions lies in the field of scientific
perestroika.
For some years Directorate T had been one of the most successFCD. Its dynamic and ambitious head, Leonid Sergeevich
ful in the
Zaitsev,
dency
who had begun
in the 1960s,
leave the
FCD
specializing in
S&T
while at the
campaigned unsuccessfully
London
resi-
for his directorate to
and become an independent directorate within the
KGB. Kryuchkov,
however, was determined not to allow such a pres-
empire to escape from his control. Zaitsev
tigious part of his intelligence
claimed not merely that his directorate was self-supporting but that the
S&T it obtained covered KGB. Despite failing to win
value of the
the entire foreign operating costs
of the
its
independence, Directorate
functioned increasingly independently of the rest of the cers trained separately in the
departments and had their
Andropov
own
Institute
FCD.
T
Its offi-
from those of other all came from
curriculum. Almost
and engineering backgrounds. In foreign residencies Line X mixed relatively little with their colleagues in other lines. Direc-
scientific
officers
torate T, however, larger
was only part
machinery of
S&T
—though a
collection.
S&T intelligence gathering in the defense field ity
—was
—of
a
much
—the chief
prior-
crucial part
26
coordinated in the early 1980s by the Military Industrial
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
622
Commission (VPK), upgraded under Gorbachev to the State Commission for the Military-Industrial Complex, which oversees all weapons production. The VPK is chaired by a deputy prime minister and tasks five collection agencies: the
State
Committee
for
GRU, FCD
Directorate
T of the KGB,
the
Science and Technology (GKNT), a secret unit
in
Academy of Sciences, and the State Committee for External Economic Relations (GKES). Documents provided during the early 1980s by a French penetration agent in Directorate T, Vladimir Ippolitovich Vetrov, code-named Farewell, show that in 1980 the VPK gave instructions for 3,617 S&T "acquisition tasks," of which 1,085 were completed within the year, benefiting 3,396 Soviet research and development pro27 Ninety percent of the intelligence judged most useful by the jects. VPK in the early 1980s came from the GRU and the KGB. Though much S&T came from unclassified sources in the West such as scientific conferences and technical brochures, secret intelligence was judged to the
VPK's informacame from American sources (not all in the United States), 10.5 percent from West Germany, 8 percent from France, 7.5 percent from
be of crucial importance. In 1980, 61.5 percent of the tion
Britain,
and
3 percent
Though no
from Japan.
statistics are available for the
the evidence suggests that the scale of Soviet
Among
Gorbachev
S&T
era, all
has tended to
in-
VPK's major
successes
have been a Soviet clone of the U.S. airborne radar system,
AW ACS;
crease rather than to decrease.
the
American Bl-B; the RYAD series of computers plagiarized from IBM originals; and integrated circuits purloined from Texas Instruments. 28 The Soviet armed forces have come to rely on S&T successes like these. Currently about 150 Soviet weapons systems are believed to depend on technology stolen from the West. Less than half the work of Directorate T, however, follows the Russian Blackjack bomber, copied from the
VPK
requirements.
Of the
microcircuits) acquired by
5,456 "samples" (machinery, components, it
in 1980,
44 percent went to defense
dustries, 28 percent to civilian industry via the
KGB
cent to the
tional, year, just
came from
in-
and 28 per-
and other agencies. In the same, possibly excep-
over half the intelligence obtained by Directorate
T
allied intelligence services, the East
Germans and Czech-
S&T
continued to expand
oslovaks chief until 1989.
GKNT,
29
among them.
Even
at the
Soviet bloc
beginning of 1990 some East European for-
eign intelligence services were trying to impress their
new
political
masters by concentrating on the sort of Western technology required
The Gorbachev Era 1985-
to
623
modernize their outdated industries. The director of the CIA,
William Webster, claimed in February 1990 that the expanding
its
was still where recruit-
in the United States, knowledge or access to technical knowl-
work, "particularly
ing of people with technical
KGB
edge has increased." Directorate T's successes in Western Europe included
intelli-
gence from Italy on the Catrin Electronic Battlefield Communications
System being developed for introduction by
NATO in the early
1990s;
team of West German computer hackers to gain access to the Pentagon data bank and a variety of other military business and research computer systems. The main expansion of Line X work at the start of the 1990s, however, appeared to be taking place in Japan and South Korea. 30 The application of S&T to Soviet industry is an increasingly complex business. The imitation of the new generation of American and Japanese microcircuits involves tracking hundreds of thousands of connections and mastering a whole series of complex and the use of a
production procedures. The most plentiful
S&T
in intelligence history
has failed to prevent the growing gap between Soviet and Western field. That gap, in turn, makes the imitation of some of the most advanced Western inventions progressively more difficult.
technology, particularly outside the defense
As
well as providing large
logical intelligence, the
"new thinking" of the
amounts of political,
KGB
scientific,
and techno-
made a broader contribution to the Gorbachev era. The disintegration of the onealso
party Soviet system, as Ernest Gellner has persuasively argued, was due partly to a two-stage process of internal decay.
sustained by both the fear of
its
subjects
Under
and an
Stalin
officially
it
had been
prescribed
which few of them dared to question. Under Khrushchev fear Those who believed and those who conformed were relatively safe from the often random terror of the Stalinist era. For most Soviet citizens, repression gave way to stagnation. By the end of the Brezhnev era, after the brief false dawn of the Andropov succesfaith,
largely disappeared.
sion, faith in the
had once
much of the fear it What remained was what the Soviet historian Batkin
system had vanished, along with
inspired.
has termed serocracy, "the rule of the gray": a faceless, dreary, stagnant,
and corrupt bureaucracy. 31
The transformation of the decaying Soviet system and the adopmore enlightened foreign policy were also due, however, to a
tion of a
change
in its leadership's perception of the outside world, particularly
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
624
of the West.
No
Politburo
dictatorship and the
dawn
the West. Their ability to
vided by the
member between
the beginning of Stalin's
of the Gorbachev era ever really understood
make
sense of the political intelligence pro-
KGB was impaired by their own ideological blinders and
incurable addiction to conspiracy theory. In their dealings with the
West they compensated
for their lack of understanding with tactical
shrewdness, ruthlessness, relentless striving to gain the upper hand, and
knowledge of some of the West's weak points provided by their diplomats and intelligence officers. In its efforts to become and remain a global superpower, however, the Soviet Union steadily built up a huge army of diplomats, intelligence officers, journalists, and academics who gradually assembled a critical mass of information on the West, which eventually undermined
some of
the certainties of a system already
decaying from within. In Mikhail Gorbachev the Soviet Union at last found a leader
who, though imbued with many traditional dogmas and misconcep-
was well aware that the Communist system was losing its way, and was ready to listen to fresh ideas. Gorbachev's most influential adviser when he took power was an academic who knew the West from personal experience, Aleksandr Nikolayevich Yakovlev, ambassador in Canada from 1973 to 1983, a man whose vision was only slightly dimmed by the mists of Marxism-Leninism. But Gorbachev's new thinking was also powerfully influenced by his many briefings by the KGB, which grew dramatically less alarmist as Operation RYAN became discredited. By 1987, however, the extent and the pace of Gorbachev's new thinking had become too much for Viktor Chebrikov. He used the tions of the outside world,
1
10th anniversary of Feliks Dzerzhinsky's birth to revive the old con-
spiracy theory of a gigantic plot by Western intelligence services to
spread ideological subversion, Trotskyism included:
One
of the main targets of the subversive activity of the
is still our society's moral and the Soviet philosophy. That is why the subversive centers spare no effort to carry out acts of ideological subversion, step up their attempts to discredit Marxist-Leninist theory and Communist Party policy, and
imperialist states' special services
and
political potential
seek in every
way
.
.
.
to discredit the Soviet state's historical
path and the practice of socialist construction.
To
this
end
bourgeois ideologists are reworking their threadbare bag-
The Gorbachev Era 1985-
625
and they not infrequently draw arguments for their insinuations from the arsenal of Trotskyism and other opporgage,
tunist currents.
Chebrikov attacked,
in particular,
two forms of "ideological subver-
sion" currently being practiced by imperialist intelligence agencies.
The
was their attempt to "split the monolithic unity of Party and people, and install political and ideological pluralism." The second was their spreading of "the virus of nationalism," which had produced first
32 "recent provocative sorties by nationalists in the Baltic republics."
is
quite likely that Chebrikov actually believed
much
It
of this nonsense.
it. By 1987, who had grasped that the traditional conspiracy theories had to be somewhat toned down
Gorbachev, however, was
at least mildly
embarrassed by
he was far closer to the more adaptable Kryuchkov,
to
meet the needs of the new thinking. Gorbachev took the unprece-
dented step of taking Kryuchkov, traveling incognito, with him on his first trip
Washington
to
in
December 1987
to sign a treaty
elimination of intermediate- and shorter-range missiles, the
on the
first
treaty
reducing the nuclear arsenals of the superpowers. Never before had a Soviet leader been
the
accompanied on a
visit to
the
West by the head of
FCD. 33 In the
summer
of 1988 Gorbachev paid a
"purposeful work" of the leadership of the
improving their
warm
tribute to the
KGB and GRU,
activities in the conditions created
"aimed
at
by the present stage
of the development of our society and of the unfolding of democratic processes." 34
By
then, however, Chebrikov's days as
chairman of the
KGB
were already numbered. Hejvas succeeded by Kryuchkov in October 1988, tho ugh he remained in the Politburo for another eleven rrirmtfr^tgTr^^ hiis -plagelp Kryucfik ov. The appointment
head of the KGB's foreign intelligence arm chairman was evidence both of the prestige of the FCD in the Gorbachev era and the importance Gorbachev himself attached to
for the first time ever of the
as
its
briefing
by
it.
Kryuchkov gave entitled
"An
his valedictory address as
head of the FCD,
Objective View of the World," at a conference in the
Soviet Foreign Ministry. It
was a remarkable mixture of the old and
new thinking, which bore witness to the extent of the changes in the FCD's assessment of the West since the most alarmist phase of Operation
RYAN
only
five
years earlier. In general he took an optimistic
view. Progress toward disarmament, in particular "the removal of the
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
626
threat of major military conflict,"
The
had become a
"fully realizable" goal.
international image of the Soviet Union had been transformed by
perestroika:
The "enemy image,"
the image of the Soviet state as a "total-
itarian" "half-civilized" society,
ological
and
political
being eroded and our ide-
is
opponents are recognizing the pro-
found nature of our reforms and their beneficial
effect
on
foreign policy.
Kryuchkov his
—
also
added a note of
self-criticism
about the
KGB's
—and
world
in
he confessed, "we have always been submerged and stereotypes." More generally:
in
traditional view of the West. In interpreting the business
capitalist countries,
cliches
We
were not good
political strata of
many
at distinguishing
contemporary
between the social and
capitalist society
and the
shades and currents in the dispositions of political
forces in a region or individual country. Unless
objective view of the world, seeing cliches
and stereotyped
it
we have an
unadorned and
ideas, all claims
about the
free of
effective-
ness of our foreign policy operations will be nothing but
empty words. Kryuchkov's address made conspiracy theories tioning Operation fication of
still
clear,
however, that the old suspicions and
lurked at the back of his mind. Without men-
RYAN by name,
he attempted a retrospective justi-
it:
Many
of [the FCD's] former responsibilities have not been removed from the agenda. The principal one of these is not to overlook the immediate danger of nuclear conflict being unleashed.
Kryuchkov American"
also
made
a traditional attack on Western "and above
intelligence services:
These have retained
measure their role of a shock one of the sharp instruments of the imperialist "brake mechanism" on the road to in full
detachment of right-wing
forces,
all
The Gorbachev Era 1985-
627
improvement of the international position. It is no chance occurrence that in the West the wide-ranging campaign of spy mania and brutal provocation employed against Soviet abroad has not
institutions
In the
first
lost its
impetus.
half of 1988 alone, he claimed, there
had been over nine
hundred "provocation operations" against Soviet missions and nationals.
35
Once chairman of the KGB, Kryuchkov's attitude, at least in public, mellowed somewhat as he embarked on an unprecedented public relations campaign. "The KGB," he declared, "should have an image not only
in
our country but worldwide that
beginning of
is
consistent with the
we are pursuing in our work." 36 At the 1989 Kryuchkov became the first chairman in KGB his-
noble goals which
I
believe
tory to receive the United States ambassador in his office.
few months he and other senior
Over the next
KGB officers gave interviews and press
conferences to Western correspondents and starred in a film The
KGB
which was offered for sale to foreign television companies. Kryuchkov also gave a series of press and television interviews for Today,
and appeared at confirmation hearings before the Supreme Soviet to answer ninety-six questions put to him by deputies. Though he was confirmed as chairman by a large majority there were twenty-six abstentions and six votes against. Throughout the public relations campaign Kryuchkov's basic Soviet audiences
message never varied. The
KGB followed
"strict
observance of Soviet
—
was under "very strict Party control," gladly accepted and indeed had suggested supervision of its work by a new Supreme Soviet Committee on Defense and State Security, had distanced itself totally from the horrors of its Stalinist past, and proposed "an entire system legality,"
—
of guarantees" to ensure that they did not return. 37 Professional and
remarkably novel though Kryuchkov's public relations were, he oversold his product. His claim that
"The
KGB
has no secret informers,
only assistants" flew in the face of the experience of millions of Russians
—
as Boris Yeltsin told
him
to his face:
most of the major organizations have no network of agents from the State Security bodies, and this causes great moral damage to our In the
place,
first
assistants but a proper
society.
.
.
.
This
democratization.
is
quite intolerable for us in this period of
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
628
KGB active measures campaign designed to discredit him, was elected chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet in May
Despite a Yeltsin
1990. After his election, he took the unprecedented step of refusing to
accept a in the
The was
KGB guard.
His security was entrusted instead to a new unit
Supreme Soviet
secretariat.
KGB
biggest change in
38
foreign operations during the late 1980s
and public relations. In 1990 Leonid Shebarhead of the FCD to be publicly identified. A
at the level of rhetoric
shin
became the
first
Pravda correspondent was, for the quarters at Yasenevo.
bidding than
when
it
He found
first
time, allowed into
Shebarshin's office
was occupied by Kryuchkov.
Shebarshin's small grandson stands on a shelf.
books on the
FCD
somewhat
A
head-
less for-
photograph of
The bookcase contains
KGB published in the West, as well as works by Solzhenit-
syn and other authors formerly condemned as anti-Soviet. "Nowadays," Shebarshin told Pravda, positive in
world
politics, to
international relations,
and
"we
are striving to bring out everything
take every opportunity to improve further
to arrive at mutually acceptable solutions."
Shebarshin does not take kindly, however, to revisionist interpretations of
FCD
who
are
history: "I
now
Union." Nor, he
must
in
am
quite categorically unable to agree with those
trying to place the
no case
insists, fail
blame
for the
Cold
War on
the Soviet
has the threat from the West disappeared:
to look into everything for intrigues
"We
and machina-
tions of hostile forces." 39
Though most changes in the FCD during the first five years of Gorbachev era were cosmetic, there were at least two changes of note at the operational level. The first was in active measures. When Gorbachev became general secretary it was business as usual in this area, and he showed no sign of seeking to interfere with it. Between 1975 and 1985 Service A (Active Measures) had grown from about fifty the
to eighty officers at Yasenevo, with a further thirty to forty in the
Novosti Press Agency
offices at Pushkin Square. Kryuchkov himself was an enthusiastic supporter of active measures, with, in Gordievsky's view, an exaggerated faith in their effectiveness. He would frequently discuss major active measures campaigns with the International De-
partment of the Central Committee, which tended to share his enthusiasm. Early in 1985 L. F. Sotskov, the first deputy head of Service A, told
Gordievsky that the service was concentrating on three key
themes: material calculated to discredit
all
aspects of American policy;
a campaign to promote conflict between the United States and
its
The Gorbachev Era 1985-
NATO
allies;
and support
it
Western peace movements. One of the
A at the beginning of the Gorbachev era was
proudest boasts of Service that
for
629
had organized the heckling of President Reagan's address to the
European Parliament in May 1985. A senior FCD officer dealing with measures assured Gordievsky that the KGB had even influenced
active
the slogans used by the hecklers.
In principle, about 25 percent of the time of
PR
officers in
was supposed to be spent on active measures, though in practice it was often less. Gordievsky noted a wide variation in the quality of forgeries and other material produced by Service A, which reflected the distinctly uneven quality of its personnel. About 50 percent of its officers were specialists in active measures; the rest were rejects from other departments. Few of the ablest and most ambitious FCD recruits wanted jobs in Service A; it rarely offered the opportunity of overseas postings and was widely regarded as a career dead end. Several active measures had to be aborted as a result of Gordievsky's defection, among them schemes to discredit Keston College in Britain, which monitors religious activity in the Soviet Union, and to fabricate a statement by Mrs. Thatcher on defense policy to the chairman of the residencies
U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
During the
late
40
1980s active measures operations in the West,
though not the Third World, became
less aggressive.
The
articles,
pamphlets, and speeches attacking Reagan and Thatcher that Service
A
had prepared
ence, such as signs too of
in the early
Arne
1980s for use by Western agents of influ-
Petersen, were gradually phased out. There were
growing Soviet disenchantment with the increasingly
credited front organizations. In
serving president of the in self-criticism.
"The
1986
Romesh Chandra,
dis-
the long-
World Peace Council, was obliged to indulge made of the president's work," he
criticisms
acknowledged, "require to be heeded and necessary corrections made."
The main "correction" made was
the appointment of a
general secretary, Johannes Pakaslahti,
who was
Chandra
WPC. Changes
as the leading figure in the
however, were insufficient to revive the
new Finnish
intended to displace of personnel,
WPC's fading influence.
the chairman of the Soviet Peace Committee,
In 1988
Genrikh Borovik,
WPC to become "a more WPC lost most of its remaining credibil-
Kryuchkov's brother-in-law, called for the pluralistic organization." ity in
1989
when
it
the Soviet Union. 41 priorities
The
admitted that 90 percent of
Though
there has been
its
income came from in methods and
some change
during the Gorbachev era, there
is
no sign that active mea-
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
630
sures themselves are likely to be discontinued.
The
International De-
partment of the Central Committee continues to supervise "gray" or semicovert active measures through front organizations and other
channels with a partly visible Soviet presence. In cooperation with the International Department, Service
measures, whose Soviet origin
is
A conducts "black" or covert active
kept concealed.
The chief area of current active measures operations by both the Department and Service A is the Third World. During A produced about ten to fifteen forgeries of U.S. official documents a year. Some were "silent forgeries," shown in confidence to influential figures in the Third World to alert them to allegedly hostile operations by the CIA or other American agencies. Others were used to promote media campaigns: among them, in 1987 a forged letter from the CIA director William Casey on plans to destabilize the Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi; in 1988 a forged document from the National Security Council containing instructions from President Reagan to destabilize Panama; and in 1989 a forged letter from the South African foreign minister "Pik" Botha to the State Department referring to a secret agreement for military, intelligence, and economic cooperation with the United States. 42 Probably the most successful active measure in the Third World during the early years of the Gorbachev era, promoted by a mixture of overt propaganda and covert action by Service A, was the attempt to blame AIDS on American biological warfare. The story International
the late 1980s Service
originated in the
summer
of 1983 in an article published in the pro-
Soviet Indian newspaper Patriot, alleging that the
AIDS virus had been
"manufactured" during genetic engineering experiments trick,
Maryland.
with great In
its
effect
Initially,
the story had
little
impact, but
by the Russian Literaturnaya Gazeta
resurrected form, the
AIDS
story
in
it
Fort Dewas revived
at
October 1985.
was bolstered by a report from
German, Russian-born biophysicist, Professor Jacob which sought to demonstrate through "circumstantial evidence" (since thoroughly discredited) that the virus had been artificially synthesized at Fort Detrick from two natural, existing viruses, VISNA and HTLV- 1 Thus assisted by quasi-scientific jargon, the AIDS fabrication not merely swept through the Third World but also took in some of the Western media. In October 1986 the conservative British Sunday Express made an interview with Professor Segal the basis of its main front-page story. In the first six months of 1987 alone the story received major coverage in over forty Third World countries. 43 a retired East Segal,
.
The Gorbachev Era 1985-
631
At the very height of its success, however, the AIDS active measure was compromised by the "new thinking" in Soviet foreign policy. Gorbachev told a Soviet media conference in July 1987: "We tell the truth and nothing but the truth." He and his advisers were clearly concerned that Western exposure of Soviet disinformation threatened
new Soviet image in the West. Faced and the repudiation of the AIDS story
to take a little of the gloss oif the
with
official
American
protests
community, including the leading Soviet AIDS expert, Viktor M. Zhdanov, the Kremlin for the first time showed signs of public embarrassment at a successful active measures campaign. In August 1987, U.S. officials were told in Moscow that the
by the international
AIDS came
story
was
scientific
officially
disowned. Soviet press coverage of the story
halt; it has not been mentioned at all by media since September 1988. 44 In 1990, however, the story was circulating not merely in the Third World but also in the more
to
an almost complete
Soviet still
gullible parts of the
Western media.
A further interview with Professor
Segal, along with film of Fort Detrick, the alleged
home
of the
AIDS
was featured prominently in a documentary on AIDS produced by a West German television company in January 1990 for Britain's Channel Four and Deutsche Rundfunk WDR, Cologne. 45 The official abandonment of the AIDS story in August 1987 was followed by other equally scurrilous anti-American active measures in the Third World, some of which also had an impact on the West. One of the most successful was the "baby parts" story, alleging that Americans were butchering Latin American children and using their bodies for organ transplants. In the summer of 1988, the story was taken up by a Brussels-based Soviet front organization, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL), and publicized extensively in the press of over fifty countries. In September 1988, a French Communist member of the European Parliament, Danielle de March, proposed a motion condemning alleged trafficking in "baby parts" and cited an IADL report as evidence for her charges. The motion passed on a show of hands in a poorly attended session. Among those taken in by the baby parts fabrication were groups as remote from virus,
the
KGB as the Jehovah's Witnesses,
in their
copies printed in fifty-four languages.
human
who
published the story in 1989
magazine Awake, which had a circulation of eleven million hearts were
on
and $1 million each. 46
sale in the
Among
circulating in the Third
World
A Greek newspaper reported that
United States for between $100,000
other active measures fabrications in
still
1990 was the claim that the United
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
632
was developing, or had actually developed, an "ethnic weapon" that would kill only nonwhites. By 1990, the "new thinking" of the Gorbachev era had dramatically reduced the level of anti-Western disinformation in the Soviet press, but still had little effect on Service States
A
operations in the Third World.
Gorbachev era also saw some change in the Moscow's growing distaste for some of its terrorist associates in the Third World was particularly evident in the case of Colonel Qaddafi. The turning point in Soviet attitudes to Qaddafi was the demonstration by anti-Qaddafi Libyans on April 17, 1984, outside the Libyan embassy, renamed the People's Bureau, in St. James's Square, London. In the course of the demonstration a Libyan intelligence officer opened fire with a Sterling submachine gun from a first-floor window, killing police constable Yvonne Fletcher. Britain broke off diplomatic relations and expelled more than sixty Libyan officials and other Qaddafi supporters. Pravda reported the killing with what at the time was unusual frankness:
The
early years of the
KGB's attitude to
terrorism.
Shooting suddenly started
.
.
.
and a British policewom-
an died and several other people were wounded as a sult.
.
.
.
What
is
re-
more, Washington spread the news that one
of its reconnaissance satellites supposedly picked up a coded
message from Tripoli to London
in
which People's Bureau
staff
were allegedly given the order to shoot
tors.
This news was followed the very next day by the British
at
demonstra-
authorities' decision to break off diplomatic relations with
Libya.
Though
the official Libyan denial of involvement in the problem
duly reported, Pravda readers were
been
fired
left in little
was
doubt that the shot had
from the People's Bureau.
The KGB, however, knew Fletcher than Pravda told
its
far
readers.
more about the
On
killing of
April 18, 1984, the
WPC
London
residency was informed by telegram that the Center had received able information that the shooting
reli-
had been personally ordered by Qaddafi. The telegram revealed that an experienced hit man from the Libyan intelligence station in East Berlin had been flown in to London to supervise the operation. Thereafter the Center tended to show some sympathy for President Reagan's description of Qaddafi as a "flaky
The Gorbachev Era 1985-
633
barbarian." Qaddafi's three-hour speech to a People's Congress in
March
1985, calling for the hunting
down
of "stray dogs," was widely
assessed in the Center as providing further evidence that he
ing unhinged. action in
a
47
"We
—an entire people liquidating
opponents at home and abroad He announced the formation of
its
broad daylight," declared Qaddafi.
new Mutarabbisoun ("Always Ready")
terrorists
was becom-
have the right to take a legitimate and sacred
force of 150 highly trained
ready to carry out liquidations around the globe. 48
The Center also looked askance at Qaddafi's willingness to supply money and Soviet Bloc arms and explosives to the Provisional IRA. In the late 1970s, after the British press reported that the PIRA had received Soviet arms, an urgent inquiry by a senior
KGB
officer
arms had come from Libya. At that point Moscow took the formalistic view that it was not responsible for what Qaddafi did with his vast Soviet arms purchases. By the mid-1980s, however, it took a much less relaxed view and became concerned by the adverse publicity caused by terrorists' use of Soviet weapons. On a number of occasions during the 1970s and 1980s, the PIRA made approaches to KGB officers in Dublin and to officers from the London residency visiting Belfast under journalistic cover. The approaches were reported to the Center, which refused permission for them to be followed up. The residency in Dublin was usually reluctant to make contact with any illegal group because of what it regarded as established that the
the near-impossibility of keeping secrets in the Irish Republic. officers
KGB
claimed that merely by listening to conversations in a number
of public houses frequented by Sinn Fein supporters they were able to learn a surprising amount. intelligence
it
received. In
ment, Nikolai Gribin,
The Center was
less
pleased with the Irish
February 1985, the head of the Third Depart-
who had
published a book on Northern Ireland
a few years earlier, visited Dublin to inspect the try to
improve
its
creasing use of Ireland as a training ground for iarize themselves
KGB
residency and
performance. The Center by then was making
young
in-
illegals to famil-
life by stays of six months or what the KGB considered more
with Irish and British
more before moving on to work
against
important targets. 49 Part of the Center's growing reluctance during the mid-1980s to involve itself with terrorist groups derived
from an increasing, though exaggerated, fear that the Soviet Union was becoming a terrorist target.
In April 1985, a circular telegram from the Center signed by
Kryuchkov himself referred
to a series of explosions in Bulgaria during
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
634
the previous August and September.
Though
the culprits had yet to be
tracked down, Kryuchkov claimed that the sophisticated nature of the devices used pointed to the possible involvement of one of the Western "special services." Kryuchkov's natural tendency to conspiracy theory led
him
to suspect a
Western plot
to use terrorism to destabilize the
The use of Bulgarian emigres to carry out terrorist acts might, he feared, become a precedent for similar operations in other socialist countries. Kryuchkov suggested that residencies consult local Soviet Bloc.
police forces to emphasize the need for international cooperation
against the terrorist menace.
Such consultation
begun. During his four years as
Guk had
London
in fact
had already
from 1980 to 1984,
resident,
approached the police on about a dozen occasions with
infor-
from the Middle East. Guk's primary concern was to alert the police to threats to Soviet targets, but he occasionally passed on intelligence about possible attacks on non-Soviet mation about
citizens also.
terrorists, usually
50
At about the time that Gordievsky received Kryuchkov's lar
circu-
telegram on the Bulgarian explosions, he also received a personal
request from the head of Directorate S (Illegals and Special Operations),
Yuri Ivanovich Drozdov (formerly resident
New
in
York), for
a bizarre collection of items related to terrorism and special operations.
Perhaps the oddest request was for a copy of the feature film
Who Dares
which Drozdov seemed to believe might reveal some of the operational methods of the British SAS. Other material requested included intelligence on left-wing terrorist groups, British "special miliWins,
and murders in strange or mystewanted details of bulletproof which it believed were being manu-
tary units," arms-dealing operations,
rious circumstances. Directorate S also
two kilos, Drozdov was a devoted fan of the
vests weighing less than
factured in Britain.
writer Frederick
Forsyth; he told Gordievsky that his novel The Fourth Protocol was "essential reading."
The book described what Drozdov
ultimate fantasy of a
KGB
regarded' as the
special operations expert: the explosion
by
Soviet agents of a small nuclear device near a U.S. airbase in Britain to
power a
reflected in part a desire to be
informed
just before a general election, with the
aim of bringing
left-wing neutralist government.
Drozdov's shopping
list
on special operations and terrorist Gordievsky that he was engaged in
activity.
at least
But
it
was also
clear to
contingency planning for
KGB special operations in Britain. Drozdov asked the London residency to obtain information on the leasing of empty warehouses and
The Gorbachev Era 1985-
635
gave Gordievsky the impression that he was looking for storage space
weapons and equipment. Some of the other information he re51 quested was to help devise cover for a KGB operation. There is little doubt, however, that for Kryuchkov fear of the spread of terrorism to the Soviet Union outweighed the attraction of for
Drozdov's schemes for a new wave of potentially risky special operations in the West.
of the
KGB
in
Once Kryuchkov succeeded Chebrikov
as
chairman
October 1988, the need for East- West collaboration
became a major theme in the unprecedented round of speeches and interviews on which he embarked. The hijacking of an Ilyushin transport plane from the Caucasus to Israel in December 1988 "ushered in," according to Kryuchkov, "a whole new era in our work." 52 Over the previous fifteen years there had against international terrorism
been
fifty
mostly unpublicized attempted hijackings in the Soviet
Union, which had been stopped with considerable loss of the
Armenian
however, the them, as lis]."
As
hijackers
KGB,
we were
demanded
to fly to Israel in
life.
When
53
December
1988,
according to Kryuchkov, actually "encouraged
sure
we would reach understanding [with "Not a single
a result, instead of another bloodbath,
the Israechild,
a single rescue operative and not even a single terrorist suffered."
54
nor
The
Soviet foreign minister,
Eduard Shevardnadze, publicly thanked the
Israelis for their help in
ending the hijacking peacefully and returning
the hijackers. So too did the
KGB.
General Vitali Ponomaryov, one of
Kryuchkov's deputy chairmen, held an unprecedented press conference to give an account of the hijacking to Western correspondents. It was, first example of such cooperation between the Soviet Union and other countries." Another of Kryuchkov's deputies, General Geni Ageev, gave further details to Tass, including the fact that the drug addict leading the hijacking, Pavel Yakshyants, had been given drugs by the KGB "because we thought it might calm him down." 55 During 1989, Kryuchkov made a series of speeches calling for cooperation between the KGB and the CIA and other Western intelli-
he declared, "the
gence services in fighting terrorism:
One wing
of terrorism
is
directed against the
other against the Soviet Union.
overcoming If
we
this
all
USA, and
the
have an interest
in
most dreadful phenomenon of this century.
we shall do away with Some remains of terrorism may be
take most decisive measures,
this evil rather quickly. left
We
over but they will be remains and not terrorism
itself.
56
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
636
In a speech to the Supreme Soviet in July and later in a newspaper
Kryuchkov underlined the coming danger of nuclear terrora pressing reason for East- West intelligence cooperation:
interview,
ism as
At the Supreme Soviet hearings I was guilty of an inaccuracy when I said that several tons of enriched uranium had disappeared in the world. Not several tons, but several hundred tons and where they went we do not know, although we can guess. tial
There
is
so
much knowledge and
around the world today that
together a nuclear device and use nation, not just one city.
Nor can
technological poten-
easy enough to put
it
is
it
to blackmail
I
an entire
rule out the desire
by
somebody to put nuclear weapons to use. There are such criminals. In short,
we
are prepared to cooperate in the drive
57 against terrorism and drug trafficking.
In October 1989, Directorate, which
Kryuchkov announced the abolition of the Fifth had hitherto monitored dissident intellectuals (and
whose responsibilities in a watered-down form were reabsorbed by the Second Chief Directorate) and the creation of a new Directorate for the Defense of the Soviet Constitutional System to coordinate the struggle against "the orgy of terrorism which has swept the world since the early
revealed that during the 1970s the KGB had identified in Union "more than 1,500 individuals with terrorist designs." 58 Simultaneously, Kryuchkov dispatched two recently retired senior KGB officers, Lieutenant General Fyodor Shcherbak, former deputy head of the Second Chief Directorate, and Major General Valentin Zvezdenkov, a former counterterrorist expert from the same director1970s."
He
the Soviet
ate, to
take part with former senior
in California to discuss
Kryuchkov
set clear limits to the
intelligence collaboration he
Intelligence
is
cific features,
CIA officers in
a
a private conference
methods of combating terrorism. 59
game without
which
I
unprecedented peacetime
was proposing: rules.
There are certain spe-
regret to say, prevent us
agreement with anyone on
from reaching
how and according to which
rules
we should conduct intelligence operations against one another. But I think we should always have decency, even in our business. 60
The Gorbachev Era 1985-
One
637
of the consequences of the limited collaboration proposed by
Kryuchkov was some decline
in the traditional
demonization of West-
As recently as the final years of the Brezhnev when denouncing the CIA, commonly excoriated "the repulsive bared teeth of the monster fed on the money of unsuspecting taxpayers, a monster which trampled underfoot all norms of ern intelligence services. era, the Soviet press,
61 morality and insulted the dignity of an entire nation."
who have
mania have been the two brightest radical the
FCD
Among
those
taken the lead in attacking the neo-Stalinist tradition of spy of Kryuchkov within
critics
during the 1970s, the British expert Mikhail Lyubimov, dis-
missed in 1980, and the American expert Oleg Kalugin, formerly the
FCD's youngest
general, banished by
Kryuchkov
careful to apportion
blame to the
to Leningrad, also in
1980. 62
Though
of both East and West, version of
own
its
Lyubimov pours scorn on
roll's
The
beasts
question
the
KGB's traditional
history:
Even the minutest successes used bronze.
intelligence services
become cast in solemn compared to Lewis Cara circle and answering the to
secret services could be
and birds running
"Who
is
in
the winner?" with the chorus cry:
"We
are!"
Like
its
counterparts in the West, the
"undermined constructive diplomatic
KGB had propagated spy mania, efforts,"
deterioration of the international situation." satellite intelligence
and "contributed
Lyubimov
to the
believes that
has "a stabilizing effect" by reassuring both sides
about the possibility of surprise attack. But in 1989 he became the
KGB resident to call, in the Soviet press,
former
size of the 63
first
for a reduction in the
FCD as well as of the KGB's huge domestic security appara-
Lyubimov published Legend About a Legend, a farce lampooning the enormously expensive secret war between the KGB and the CIA. Moscow News suggested that it would make "a good musical comedy." 64
tus.
In 1990
Oleg Kalugin began public criticism of the sacked as deputy head of the Leningrad
KGB
KGB
after
number of politically embarrassing bribery made a thinly disguised attack on the paranoid strain
attempts to investigate a cases.
65
in the
In 1988 he
FCD
he was
in 1987, following his
during Kryuchkov's fourteen years at
its
head:
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
638
Just a few years ago those at the august rostrum
would have
us believe that the reasons for the different distortions in our life
lay not in the defects of the system but in hostile encircle-
ment, in the intensifying pressure being brought to bear on socialism by the forces of imperialism, and that the antisocial
and the crimes against the state they committed were a consequence of hostile propaganda and activity of individuals
CIA
provocations.
was for expressing similarly unorthodox opinions in 1980 that Kaluhad been sacked by Kryuchkov from the FCD. Though criticizing American covert operations, Kalugin also attacked the KGB's traditional demonization of the CIA. While head of the KR line in Washington during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Kalugin had been impressed by intelligence which indicated that the CIA took a much more realistic view than the Pentagon of the outcome of the Vietnam War: It
gin
On quite a few occasions I have had a CIA staff members, although they did selves as such.
locutors I
They were highly
chance to meet with not introduce them-
refined
who avoided extremes in
and educated interAlthough
their judgments.
did not delude myself over their friendly smiles,
them
nevertheless inclined to perceive
were not necessarily burdened by
I
as individuals
was
who
class hatred for everything
Soviet.
Kalugin praises the current director of the CIA, William Webster, as man "not even ashamed to sour relations with the White House when
a
he was defending a just cause." 66 He plainly does not feel as warmly about Kryuchkov. In 1990 Kalugin dismissed Kryuchkov's he
felt
more than a cosmetic
reforms as
little
shadow
in absolutely every sphere of
is
KGB's new image
is
exercise.
Like the rest of the world, the
intelligence
KGB
failed to foresee either the speed
in 1989.
But
it
may
Communist
rule in Eastern
nonetheless have been the
agency to sense that the Soviet Bloc created
at the
first
end of
World War was doomed. During the early and mid-1980s was already a growing exasperation combined with fatalism in the
the Second there
"The KGB's arm or
All the talk about the
no more than camouflage." 67
or the timing of the disintegration of
Europe that began
life.
The Gorbachev Era 1985Center about the future of Eastern Europe, and at the
end of the decade. By
639
it
gathered
momentum
the beginning of the Gorbachev era Gor-
dievsky was hearing increasing numbers of complaints about the unreliability
of the
Communist regimes and outbursts such
better to adopt a policy of 'Fortress Soviet
the lot of them!"
were straws
Though not
in the
in
1989 was to replace the
satirically entitled "Sinatra
allowing the states of Eastern Europe to "do
Three
"We'd do
as:
—and have done with
yet intended seriously, such outbursts
wind of change that
Brezhnev Doctrine with the
Union'
states in Eastern
it
Europe were,
their
for
Doctrine,"
way."
somewhat
reasons, already giving the Center serious cause for anxiety
different
by the time
Gorbachev succeeded Chernenko as general secretary in March 1985. The first was Poland. The FCD had been severely shaken by the mushroom growth of Solidarity in 1980-81. Though it had admired the skill with which Jaruzelski, the Polish army, and the SB had carried out a military coup and crushed Solidarity in December 1981, it was better aware than most Western observers that it had achieved only a temporary respite.
The Center's main source of anxiety was the visible fact that the in Poland of a Polish Pope eclipsed that of the Polish government. The days were long past when any Soviet leader was moral authority
tempted to repeat
Stalin's scornful question at the
World War: "How many
divisions has the
end of the Second
Pope?" In retrospect, the
Polish experts in the Center were inclined to trace the origins of the Polish crisis to the election in October 1978 of the Polish Cardinal
Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul seven months see
later,
68
When
he had visited Poland
almost a quarter of the Polish people had come to
and hear him; almost
tour on television.
II.
all
the rest witnessed his triumphal nine-day
At the end of
his progress
through Poland, as the
Pope bade farewell to his former home city of Krakow, where, he said, "every stone and every brick is dear to me," men and women wept uncontrollably in the streets. The contrast between the political bankruptcy of the regime and the moral authority of the church was plain for all to see. 69
Opinions were divided within the Center on the likelihood of
KGB
involvement in the assassination attempt against the Pope in
About half of those to whom Gordievsky spoke were convinced KGB would no longer contemplate a "wet affair" of this kind even indirectly through the Bulgarians. The other half, however, suspected that Department 8 of Directorate S, which was responsible for 1981.
that the
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
640
had been involved; some told Gordievsky they only had failed. The lack of authority of the Communist government in Poland was laid bare once again when John Paul II returned in 1983, urging those who opposed the regime to turn to the protection of the church. In October 1984, the Polish church gained a new martyr when the SB religious-affairs department abducted and murdered the pro-Solidarity priest Father Jerzy Popieluszko. Half a million attended his funeral. Walesa declared at the graveside: "Solidarity is alive because you have special operations,
regretted that the attempt
given your
life
for it." Desperate to distance himself
from the crime,
Jaruzelski ordered a public trial of the murderers, thus causing a
wave of alarm
in the
FCD. At
new
the end of 1984 a circular from the
Center ordered a series of active measures during 1985 designed to discredit the "reactionary"
The
John Paul
Center's concerns about East
from those about Poland. Though the unpopularity of the
chev era
it
When
German
70
Germany were quite different
KGB had no illusions about the
regime, at the beginning of the Gorbait
centered instead on what
tance of the East lead.
Communist
did not yet believe that
Its anxieties
II.
was it
leader Erich
in
danger of losing control.
regarded as the growing reluc-
Honecker
to follow
Moscow's
SED
the seventy-eight-year-old Walter Ulbricht retired as
general secretary in 1971,
Moscow had wanted
Willi Stoph to succeed
When Honecker had been chosen instead, the embittered Stoph had warned Moscow that Honecker's nationalism threatened the future of Soviet-GDR relations. And so it proved. him.
The domineering behavior of cers that
Soviet diplomats
had been tolerated by Ulbricht gave
rise
and
KGB
offi-
under Honecker to
a series of incidents. In the mid-1970s, following the arrest for drunken
driving of a
KGB
officer
from
its
Karlshorst headquarters, the
KGB
chief General Anatoli Ivanovich Lazarev
use of Nazi methods against a fraternal
had complained about "the power." Honecker then com-
more forcibly about Lazarev. At his insistence Lazarev Moscow. The Soviet ambassador, Petr Andreevich Abrasimov, was recalled after similar complaints by Honecker about his viceregal attitude in 1983; once back in Moscow he was put in
plained even
was
recalled to
charge of tourism. Both Erich Mielke, the East
German
minister of
and Markus Wolf, the veteran head of the HVA, complained to the Center that Honecker was restricting the intimacy of Soviet-GDR intelligence collaboration. The situation was further complicated by the fact that Mielke and Wolf were themselves scarcely on state security,
The Gorbachev Era 1985speaking terms. There were endless discussions in the Center,
641
some of
them witnessed by Gordievsky in Grushko's office, on how to strengthen Mielke's and Wolfs hands against Honecker, and how to prevent Mielke and Wolf themselves from coming to blows. In 1985, however, the Center did not yet foresee that perestroika in the Soviet
Union would add a further element of tension to relations with the German Democratic Republic. 71 The East European state that the Center believed to be in greatest danger of collapse at the beginning of the Gorbachev era was Nicolae Ceau§escu's corrupt and megalomaniac neo-Stalinist dictatorship in Rumania, already semidetached from the Warsaw Pact. A long assessment by FCD Department Eleven (Eastern Europe Liaison) in 1983 forecast that, with Rumania already on the verge of bankruptcy, there was a serious danger of economic collapse within the next few years. In that event, it predicted, loss of control by the regime might well lead Rumania to turn toward the West. By the time Gorbachev succeeded Chernenko, that prospect was being taken very seriously. During his last two years in London as deputy resident and resident, Gordievsky received several requests from the Center for intelligence on Western attitudes to Rumania. 72 In the end, Ceau§escu's dictatorship was almost the last of the East European Communist regimes to succumb to the tide of democratic revolution in 1989, though the end, when it arrived, came with even greater speed, and brutality, than in
Warsaw Pact. Communist order
the other countries of the
By
in Eastern Europe began to was probably already reconciled to the disintegration of what its internal documents commonly called the "Socialist Commonwealth." That disintegration, however, threatened to disrupt the elaborate network of Soviet Bloc intelligence collaboration, which went back to the early years of the Cold War. In every country of Eastern Europe, the local security service, modeled on the KGB, was seen by its inhabitants as one of the main instruments of oppression and instantly became one of the chief targets of the democratic reformers. By early 1990 most had been emasculated. In most parts of Eastern Europe the foreign intelligence services, which had hitherto been an integral part of the security services on the model of the KGB's FCD,
the time the
collapse, the Center
turned themselves into independent agencies in order to try to survive.
By
the beginning of 1990 the
KGB
could no longer count
German HVA in NATO and West Germany; on the Czechoslovak
automatically, as in the past, on the help of the East its
operations against
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
642
StB and the Polish SB
work
against France; or on the Bulgarian and Greece. The intelligence alliance with East Germany was already doomed. In a reunited Germany the external HVA, like the internal SSD, will cease to exist. Dismantling the KGB apparatus in Karlshorst will be an enormous task; at a stroke
DS
in its
against Yugoslavia, Turkey,
the Soviet
Union
will lose its largest foreign intelligence base.
The end
of the Soviet-GDR intelligence alliance threatens to compromise some of the
tem
KGB's own
in the Center,
intelligence operations.
known
as
The
central name-trace sys-
SOUD (System for Operational and Insti-
German computer. Hitherto the Cuban as Warsaw Pact intelligence services have had access to it. 73 The KGB's alliances in Latin America were also threatened by crumbling of the Soviet bloc. Though Castro has lasted longer than
tutional Data), uses an East
well as the
the
Honecker, he showed himself even more ill-disposed to Gorbachev's
"new
By
thinking."
length.
The
situation
Chebrikov himself ance.
74
It is
KGB
1987, the
already complaining that the
was judged
visited
liaison mission in
DGI
Cuban
Cuba
Havana was
was holding
it
at arm's
to be so serious in the Center that
to try to restore the intelligence
unlikely that he secured a lasting improvement.
of the Sandinistas, probably against
KGB expectations,
The
alli-
defeat
in the Nicara-
guan elections of February 1990 placed the future of the four Soviet sigint stations in Nicaragua at risk. Castro's increasingly uncertain prospects of survival as his huge Soviet subsidies were scaled down raised doubts about the future of the
Lourdes
The
in
much
larger sigint station at
Cuba.
greatest threat to the future of the
headquarters in Dzerzhinsky Square
it
KGB is its own past.
From
the greatest peacetime persecution and the largest concentration in
European
history.
its
directed during the Stalinist era
The people's deputy and
camps
Soviet sporting hero Yuri
Vlasov told the Congress of People's Deputies in 1989: "The
KGB
is
not a service but a real underground empire which has not yet yielded its secrets,
except for opening up the graves." 75
nervousness about revealing the contents of its
awareness of the threat they pose.
independence
in
Its
its
The
Center's acute
archives demonstrates
preparations for Lithuanian
1990 had as a major priority the disposal of hundreds
of thousands of embarrassing files. Radio Vilnius reported that the chairman of the Lithuanian KGB, Eduardas Eismontas, had virtually
admitted that
much
of his archives had been shredded or removed to
Moscow. Soon afterward Eismontas
resigned. 76
The Gorbachev Era 1985-
Those concern
files
that cause the greatest
embarrassment to the
foreign operations. During the
its
643
late
1980s
it
KGB
fought a long
though hopeless rearguard action to avoid accepting responsibility for
March 1989 Poland's
Forest. In
nerved
itself to
NKVD
in the
Katyn
Communist government massacre on the KGB. The
Polish
the wartime massacre of Polish officers by the
finally
last
pin the blame for the
documents found in the pockets of the murdered offihad been prisoners of the NKVD at the time of another execution. For year, however, the KGB press bureau
press published
cers proving that they their
continued to blame the killings on the
Germans and
refused to "antici-
When
77 pate" the long-delayed findings of a Soviet-Polish commission.
Moscow News challenged the KGB to "confirm or deny" the Polish evidence, threats were made against its editor-in-chief. NKVD veterans with information on the Katyn massacre told Moscow News the KGB had ordered them not to reveal the truth. 78 Not until April 1990, when President Gorbachev handed President Jaruzelski a portfolio of docu-
ments proving the
bow
NKVD's
role in the massacre, did the
KGB finally
and accept responsibility. Over the next few months several more mass graves of Polish officers were uncovered. to the inevitable
The even in the
Center's apprehensions at the potential embarrassments file
of a single foreigner are well illustrated by the case of
the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. While stationed in Budapest in
1944-45, Wallenberg saved the lives of
giving
them Swedish diplomatic
many thousands
protection.
Soon
after the
of Jews by
Red Army
occupied Hungary, however, he mysteriously disappeared. Ever since his disappearance the
Swedish government, the Wallenberg family and
the Raoui Wallenberg Society have repeatedly pressed veal the truth about his fate.
The KGB's
—
Moscow
refusal to release his
to re-
file
led
—
rumors all, sadly, unfounded that Wallenberg was still alive somewhere in the gulag. In 1957 Andrei Gromyko, then deputy foreign minister, handed the Swedish ambassador in Moscow a memoto repeated
randum claiming
that Wallenberg died of a heart attack in a Soviet
prison in 1947. That falsehood
is still
described by the Soviet authorities
as "irrefutable fact." In October 1989, however, an attempt to defuse international pressure for the release of the
KGB
was made on the
file
Wallenberg case by inviting representatives of the Raoul Wallenberg
Nina Lagergren, and his half brother, Moscow. There they were received by
Society, including his half sister,
Guy von
Dardel, to talks in
Vadim Petrovich Pirozhkov,
a deputy chairman of the KGB, and Valentin Mikhailovich Nikoforov, a deputy foreign minister, who
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
644
handed over Wallenberg's passport, some of his personal belongings, and a bogus death certificate dated July 17, 1947, signed by the chief doctor of the Lubyanka Prison. Pirozhkov and Nikoforov expressed "deep regret"
that, despite
"painstaking" searches in the
KGB
ar-
no further documents could be discovered. 79 Andrei Sakharov, among others, was publicly skeptical that such an important KGB file on a foreign diplomat was missing. In reality the file has never gone chives,
is simply considered too embarrassing to make public. What the KGB's file on Wallenberg reveals is that, shortly after arrival of the Red Army in Budapest, the NKVD tried to recruit
astray. It
the
him as an agent. When Wallenberg refused point-blank, the NKVD became worried that he might reveal its approach to him, arrested him, and deported him to the Soviet Union. Further attempts in Moscow to persuade Wallenberg to become a Soviet agent also failed. He was shot not later than 1947. 80
during 1989, the veterans,
To muddy
KGB
the waters of the Wallenberg case
brought in one of
Radomir Bogdanov, then deputy
its
leading active measures
director of the
Academy
of
Sciences Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada, as well as vice-chairman of the Soviet Peace
Committee. As resident
in
New
Delhi from 1957 to 1967 Bogdanov had played a leading part in establishing India as
one of the main centers of Soviet active measures. 81
During the spring of 1989, Bogdanov began informing foreign visitors and journalists in Moscow that Wallenberg had acted as intermediary in secret negotiations
during 1944 between Lavrenti Beria and the head
of the SS, Heinrich Himmler. 82
The Moscow New Times, formerly used
as a vehicle for active measures, continued the
smear campaign by
portraying Wallenberg as a playboy, womanizer and friend of Adolf
Eichmann, chief administrator of the Final Solution. 83 The KGB, however, is no longer master of all its own
The democratic
revolution in Eastern Europe confronts
it
secrets.
with the
embarrassing possibility that, as during the Prague Spring in 1968, secrets may escape from the files of its former Soviet Bloc One of those that must surely worry Kryuchkov personally is the
some of its allies.
DS
file on the murder of the Bulgarian emigre writer Georgi September 1978. Some months earlier the Bulgarian general secretary Todor Zhivkov had sought KGB assistance in silencing
Bulgarian
Markov
in
who were attacking him in the Western media. The Center made available to Zhivkov and the Bulgarian Durzharna Sigurnost (DS) the resources of a highly secret KGB emigres like his former protege Markov
laboratory, the successor to the
Kamera
of the Stalinist era, attached
The Gorbachev Era 1985-
645
OTU (Operational-Technical) and under the direct control of the KGB chairman. Kryuchkov personally approved the secondment of General Sergei Mikhailovich Golubev of FCD Directorate K
to Directorate
to liaise with the
in using against
Bulgarian emigres poisons devel-
(Seven years later Golubev was to super-
drugging of Gordievsky with drugs from the same laboratory
vise the in
DS
KGB laboratory.
oped by the
84 an unsuccessful attempt to get him to confess. ) Golubev visited
Sofia three or four times during 1978 to help plan operations against
the emigres.
The first target was a Bulgarian emigre living in Western Europe. The DS smeared surfaces in a room where he was staying with a poison that, once absorbed through the skin, would, according to the
KGB
and leave no
laboratory, prove fatal
became proval,
seriously
ill,
Though
trace.
the target
however, he survived. With Kryuchkov's ap-
Golubev returned
to Sofia to
work out
a
new plan of attack. At
KGB main residency in Washington purchased and sent them to the Center. Directorate OTU
Golubev's request, the several umbrellas
adapted the
tip to
enable
it
to inject the victim with a tiny metal pellet
containing ricin, a highly toxic poison
made from
castor-oil seeds.
Golubev then took the umbrellas to Sofia to instruct a DS assassin in their use. The first fatality was Georgi Markov, then working for the Bulgarian section of the tal
on September
BBC World Service.
11, 1978,
Markov was
Before he died in a hospi-
able to
tell
doctors that he had
been bumped into by a stranger on Waterloo Bridge, for accidentally
prodding him with his umbrella.
a pellet scarcely larger than a pinhead
who
apologized
A tiny stab wound and
were found
in
Markov's
right
by the time of the autopsy the ricin had decomposed. Markov's assassination abated another Bulgarian emigre,
thigh, but
Vladimir Kostov, to the significance of an earlier attack on him in Paris
on August 26. On September 25 a steel pellet of the kind that had killed Markov was removed, still intact, from Kostov's body before the ricin had escaped. The arrest of Todor Zhivkov late in 1989 was followed by
widow in an attempt to discover those Even if the DS files on the Markov case have been shredded or sent to Moscow, there are undoubtedly DS officers who know the truth about his assassination. As Bulgaria prothe
visit to Sofia
of Markov's
responsible for her husband's death.
gresses
Despite
toward democracy they may well be tempted to reveal its
unprecedented public relations campaign, the
most the only unrestructured
institution in
KGB
85
it.
is al-
Gorbachev's Russia. For
all
KGB: THE INSIDE STORY
646
change
his attempts to ited past.
So
is
his
Kryuchkov
his image,
former acolyte
in the First
Fyodorovich Grushko, appointed early in 1991. Today's
KGB
does
first its
is
a relic from a discred-
Chief Directorate, Viktor
deputy chairman of the
best to distance itself
KGB
from both
the Stalinist Terror and the lesser crimes of the "years of stagnation."
As the enormity are
bound
reformed. their
own
later the
of its horrific history emerges, however, Soviet citizens
to ask themselves if such
an organization can ever really be
The peoples of Eastern Europe have already condemned security services created in the
KGB
image of the
too will be disowned by
candlelit vigil that encircled the
KGB
its
own
KGB.
Sooner or
The 1989 commemorate
citizens.
headquarters to
marked the beginning of that disavowal. Like every major modern state, Russia needs both a domestic security service and a foreign intelligence agency. For it to possess an intelligence community worthy of its citizens' respect, however, it will have to close down the KGB and start afresh. its
millions of victims
Appendix A KGB Chairmen
Feliks
1917-26
Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky
(Cheka/GPU/OGPU) Vyacheslav Rudolfovich Menzhinsky
1926-34
(OGPU) Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda
1934-36
(NKVD) Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov
1936-38
(NKVD) 1938-41
Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria
(NKVD) Vsevolod Nikolayevich Merkulov
1941 (Feb.-July)
(NKGB) 1941^3
Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria
(NKVD) 1943^6
Vsevolod Nikolayevich Merkulov
(NKGB/MGB) Viktor Semyonovich
Abakumov
1946-51
(MGB) 647
APPENDIX
648 Sergei Ivanovich Ogoltsov
(Acting;
1951(Aug.-Dec.)
MGB)
Semyon Denisovich Ignatyev
1951-53
(MGB) Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria
1953(Mar.-June)
(MVD) Sergei Nikiforovich Kruglov
1953-54
(MVD) Ivan Aleksandrovich Serov
1954-58
(KGB) Aleksandr Nikolayevich Shelepin
1958-61
(KGB) Vladimir Yefimovich Semichastny
1961-67
(KGB) Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov
1967-82
(KGB) Vitali Vasilyevich
Fyodorchuk
1982 (May-Dec.)
(KGB) Viktor Mikhailovich Chebrikov
1982-88
(KGB) Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov
1988-
Appendix B
Heads
of the First Chief Directorate
(Foreign Intelligence)
Mikhail Abramovich Trilisser
1921-29
Artur Khristyanovich Artuzov
1929-34
Abram Aronovich
1934-38
Slutsky
1938(Feb.-July)
Mikhail Shpigelglas (acting head)
Vladimir Georgievich Dekanozov
1938-40
Pavel Mikhailovich Fitin
194(M6
Pyotr Vasilyevich Fedotov
1946-49
(deputy chairman Sergei
KI 1947-49)
Romanovich Savchenko
(deputy chairman Vasili Stepanovich
1949-53
KI 1949-51) Ryasnoy
1953(Mar.-June)
Aleksandr Semyonovich Panyushkin
1953-56
Aleksandr Mikhailovich Sakharovsky
1956-71
Fyodor Konstantinovich Mortin
1971-74
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov
1974-78
Leonid Vladimirovich Shebarshin
1988-
649
Appendix C THE ORGANIZATION OF THE KGB President
Central Committee,
Central Committee,
Politburo
CPSU
State
and Law
Department
KGB
Collegium
KGB
Chairman
Party
Committee
and Deputies
Secretariat
Special Inspectorate 1
I
Personnel Directorate
Finance and
Mobilization
Administrative and
Planning
Directorate
Supply Directorate
Directorate
CHIEF DIRECTORATES 1
1
I
Eighth (Communi-
Border Troops
First (Foreign
Second (Internal
Intelligence)
Security and
cations and
Counter-
Cryptography)
intelligence)
DEPARTMENTS AND SERVICES
DIRECTORATES 3rd (Military
KGB
- - 4th (Transport)
Counterintelligence)
Protection
10th
Service (formerly 9th
Department
(Archives)
Directorate,
Government Guards) Protection of the
6th (Economic
Investigation
Constitution (formerly
Counter-
Department
5th Directorate,
intelligence
Ideology and
and Industrial
Dissidents)
Security)
Operational Technical
--
7th (Surveillance)
(OTU)
KGB
Government Communications
6th Department
Higher
(Interception and
School
Inspection of
Correspondence) 16th
15th (Security of
12th Department
(Communications
Government
Eavesdropping
Interception and
Installations)
Sigint)
Military Construction
Source:
Desmond
Ball
and Robert Windren,
"Soviet Signals Intelligence (Sigint): Organisation
and Management," Intelligence and Naand Gor-
tional Security, vol. iv (1989), no. 4,
dievsky.
651
APPENDIX
652
II